Would you know if an employee’s business email address and password had been exposed online?
Cybercriminals do not always need to break through sophisticated security systems to target a business. Sometimes, they can simply log in using credentials that have already been stolen.
Those details could be circulating on the dark web for months, or even years, without the business or employee realising. If the same password is still being used elsewhere, it may provide criminals with a route into company email, cloud applications or other important systems.
The question is not only whether your business has suffered a cyberattack. It is whether information connected to your business is already available to somebody planning one.
What is the dark web?
The dark web is a part of the internet that cannot be found through conventional search engines and requires specialist software to access. Although it has legitimate uses, it is also used by criminals to share, trade and sell stolen information.
This can include:
- Business email addresses and passwords
- Employees’ personal information
- Customer or supplier data
- Banking and payment details
- Confidential company documents
The information may have come directly from an attack on your business, but that is not always the case. It could originate from a breach involving a website, application or third-party service used by one of your employees. Criminals can use this information to target individuals and organisations through account takeovers, impersonation, fraud and highly convincing phishing attacks.
How do business credentials become exposed?
Finding company information on the dark web does not necessarily mean your own systems have been hacked.
Credentials can be exposed when a third-party website, application or online service suffers a data breach. An employee may have registered for that service using their business email address, or reused a password that is also associated with a work account.
Information can also be captured through phishing emails, malicious websites, malware or compromised devices. Once stolen, it may be combined with information from other breaches and made available to cybercriminals.
This can make it difficult for a business to know where the exposure originated, how long the information has been available or whether somebody has already tried to use it.
Why does exposed information matter?
An email address on its own may not appear particularly valuable. However, combined with a password, personal information or details about the employee’s role, it can become much more useful to an attacker.
Criminals may test exposed username and password combinations against other services in the hope that they have been reused. This is known as credential stuffing.
If they successfully access a business account, they could:
- Read or intercept company emails
- Impersonate an employee or senior manager
- Send fraudulent payment requests
- Target customers and suppliers
- Access commercially sensitive information
- Use the account as a starting point for a wider attack
Even old information can present a risk when passwords have not been changed or the same credentials are being used across several accounts.
Would your business know?
There may be warning signs, such as unfamiliar login alerts, unexpected password resets, unexplained multi-factor authentication requests or emails that the user does not remember sending.
However, there may be no obvious indication at all. A stolen password can remain unused until an attacker identifies the right opportunity or gathers enough additional information to make an approach more convincing.
Without visibility of what is being shared beyond your own systems, your business could remain unaware of the risk.
Finding the risk before it becomes an incident
Knowing that business information has been exposed gives you an opportunity to act before it is used against you.
Dark web monitoring is designed to identify information connected to an organisation that appears within compromised data. It can help businesses understand their potential exposure and bring previously unknown risks to their attention.
Communications Plus offers a dark web monitoring service to help businesses discover whether credentials and information associated with their organisation may have been exposed. Our specialists can help you understand what has been identified, assess the potential risk and determine the appropriate next steps.
Could your business already be exposed?
You cannot always prevent another organisation from suffering a data breach. You can, however, take steps to understand whether information connected to your business has fallen into the wrong hands.
If you do not know whether your company credentials may be circulating on the dark web, speak to Communications Plus to find out more about our dark web monitoring service and how it could help protect your business.
Find out more about our dark web monitoring service. Get in touch with our team today Call – 01744 412342.
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