Date:   Wednesday, February 24, 2022
Author:   ICS Admin



Prior to the news in Ukraine, state-sponsored hackers had stepped up their attacks. A large portion comes from Russia and its allies. However, others are using the fog of war to disguise their attacks and hope that everyone will blame Ukraine's aggressors.

Please know that these events are spilling into your day-to-day lives. You may not be hacked directly, but the businesses you deal with are fighting an increasing onslaught of attacks. The unfortunate side effect of these activities is rising costs, loss of services, and in some cases, the debilitation of your local establishments (governments, businesses, organizations, etc.).

In addition, viruses and malware being deployed against Ukraine will end up on your computer soon. Again, these programs are written by teams of government-sponsored entities. There could be up to 1000 highly skilled individuals against you. The odds are not in your favor.

So, please take steps to protect yourselves:

• use antivirus software
• if your antivirus solution doesn't mitigate malware, add software that will
• clean your browser cache regularly
• always check who an e-mail is from before opening
• don't click on links in an e-mail that have a bizarre URL associated with them (hover over the link, look at your status bar to see the URL)
• don't install programs or open documents that were e-mailed to you from an e-mail address you don't recognize
• don't view websites that claim to be a company but have a generic or overly long address (URL).
• change your passwords every 180 days (or sooner)
• use a different password on every site
• your password should be at least 15 characters. Though, that is still not long enough.
• and check various websites to see if your credentials have been stolen     Have I Been Pwned (https://haveibeenpwned.com/)