Our foremost mission is to protect small businesses. In keeping with that, we’re breaking with our normal Threat Watch system in order to detail a rather nefarious scam taking place given the current crisis that you and your staff may encounter.Our scanning picked up significant plans to increase the volume and sophistication of phishing emails and scam phones calls directed at small businesses now and in the coming weeks.We want to make sure you’re aware of what some of these threats look like so that you are better prepared. You may see some of the following directed at your inboxes and company phone lines:
- Offers to sell “COVID-19” small business insurance which cover revenue loss.
- Requests for help from state or federal government agencies to provide services or loans because of corona virus activity in your area.
- Requests to ship vaccines to your location in order to help with local distribution.
- Government agency or law enforcement demands that you must close your business or pay a fee to keep it open.
- Each are scams designed to extract funds or personal information from you and take advantage of the fear and confusion around the coronavirus.
We thought it was worth a heads up that these activities are coordinated, and we as well as other security professionals, the FBI, Secret Service, and the WHO expect similar attacks to increase.Should you receive a message like the above, please look extra hard. If it smells fishy, it very likely is. A good thing to do with that message if you see it and don’t already have more sophisticated mechanisms in place, is to forward the email, after stripping out all links and attachments, to your staff letting them know what it looks like and that they should take no action on it if they receive the same.If you have any doubt, please reach out and and we’ll help. Feel free to forward this to your staff, as it’s likely they’ll see these before you do.Stay healthy.
