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Cyber criminals continually look for ways to steal personal information from private accounts. Getting access to info isn’t enough; hackers want to control profiles like your social media or your work email account. Once they do, they can spread phishing scams to your followers and friends list, see confidential data available only to administrators, and even post them on private groups you can access. This tactic is called account takeover, also known as ATO.
It can lead to data theft, financial issues, and communication problems in your personal and business relationships.
Keeping your online accounts safe from hackers means taking measures to protect them against ATO!
How Does Account Takeover Happen?
ATO can employ artificial intelligence to help take over your profiles…and you can use AI to keep them safe from hackers, too. AI can spam a laundry list of accounts with brute-force password breakers and gain access to any profile with weak credentials. Still, it can also constantly monitor your accounts for unusual activity.
The program watches for unusual login attempts, unauthorized changes to your account settings, and strange messages being sent or received. If anything seems suspicious, the AI will alert you and your IT team so defensive maneuvers and investigations can launch as soon as possible.
What is classified as suspicious behavior?
- Suspicious logins
- Unexpected changes
- Messages sent or received that strike you as odd
- Anything unusual
If your gut senses something, it’s better to follow your intuition than risk account takeover because you dismissed a red flag as “no big deal.”
Protect Yourself Against Account Takeover
You don’t have to wait for a hacker to act on your network. Taking proactive defense measures can prevent cyber criminals from ever breaking in.
Like secured buildings have different access levels, internal systems also need strong access controls and network segmentation. In other words, sensitive data is sectioned off so only authorized users can see or manage it. The fewer people who can access and oversee sensitive data, the fewer vulnerabilities are open for cyber criminals to exploit.
Network segmentation ensures that different vital data is stored and organized accordingly, so a breach of one restricted area (physically or digitally) does not leak your entire organizational database. Think of segmentation as a series of lockers to protect data. Finally, there are remedial measures to minimize the damage of an incident if one should occur. Set documented incident response plans to ensure you and all your coworkers know what to do when they notice suspicious activity. Can you contact your superiors and IT team about a potential breach? Do your systems alert you immediately when something happens?
It’s never too late to shore up your defenses and ensure that your systems are protected against the latest threats. Account takeover attacks happen…but they don’t have to happen to you! Keep your profiles safer by using multi-factor authentication, noticing and reporting suspicious activity on the network, and keeping the confidentiality of the secure data on your accounts and under your care.
At Commonwealth Sentinel, we offer technical solutions like Security Operations Center (SOC) and training packages to help you prevent falling victim to cyber crime. Our Critical Response Team can help you get your systems back up and running if the worst happens. What’s your first step? Schedule a free consultation today or contact us at (502) 320-9885 for more information.