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10 Tips to Stop Cyber-Criminals from Ruining Your Holiday

23 Jul , 2015 No Comments

Often when we go on holiday we jeopardise our own personal information, either by using credit cards in foreign countries, announcing our travels on social media or using open networks while travelling. Below are 10 tips on how to be more cautious when on holiday.

1  Don’t shout it from the rooftops

Don’t broadcast your upcoming holiday on social media. And if you do, then don’t reveal too many details about your plans. This information could be useful for someone with a sinister motive and could leave your home and valuables exposed.

Make sure you deactivate your GPS. This way you don’t have to worry about it giving away clues of your whereabouts which might avert criminals to the fact that you’re out of town.

2  Back-up all your devices

If you have decided  to take your laptop, tablet or smartphone with you on holiday – don’t forget to make back-ups of the data and store it in a secure place.
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Q1-2015-Results

PandaLab’s Results for the First Quarter of 2015

25 Jun , 2015 No Comments

PandaLabs published its Quarterly Report for Q1, analysing the IT security events and incidents from January through March 2015. The anti-malware laboratory detected over 225 000 new malware strains per day in the first quarter of the year, with peaks reaching 500 000. This record-breaking figure represents a 40% increase over Q1 2014 and is well above the average for the entire year, which stood at approximately 205 000 new malware samples per day. Most of these specimens were variants of known malware, conveniently modified by virus writers to evade detection by antivirus laboratories. Trojans continued to be the most common threat type, representing 72.75% of all new malware and the main source of infections  at 76.05% of the total.

The first months of the year were dominated by ransomware attacks – especially CryptoLocker. Ransomware has become cyber-criminals’ preferred method to make money from companies’ stolen information. Ten companies in the oil and gas maritime transportation sector,  fell victim to this type of attack, as revealed by Panda Security in a report on a hacking campaign dubbed “Operation Oil Tanker: The Phantom Menace” which targeted oil tankers.

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Police-Virus

Cyber Police Virus Strikes Again

10 Jun , 2015 No Comments

The Cyber Police Virus is malware that attacks Android devices. Designed by cyber criminals who focus primarily on phone markets to collect money from unwary users, using counterfeit fines and violations.  The virus locks users’ phones and displays a fake fine on the screen, demanding a fee be paid. Although this virus does not encrypt data, as with ransomware for PC’s, the message remains on the screen and the virus is somewhat difficult to remove.  This Trojan is targeting users from 31 different countries around the world; 23 of which are European countries and is one of many new malware samples attacking Android devices. This is just more evidence that mobile devices are no longer considered “safe” and that users can start looking at protection for all their devices.

 

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Android-Lollipop

Smart Lock for Mobile included in Android 5.0, Lollipop

29 May , 2015 No Comments

When Android 5.0, Lollipop was announced late in 2014, it came with several new features. Smart Lock allows users to bypass the device lockscreen when certain environmental conditions are met or set.

Smart Lock is built upon a new Lollipop feature called “trust agents.” True Agents, is a service that notifies the system about whether it believes the environment of the device to be trusted. Smart Lock, makes use of three options – Trusted face, Trusted places and Trusted Devices.

Trusted Face

Allows the user to have their device memorize their face and “quickly” unlock their device without the need of entering your password. With Trusted Face activated, you can interact with your notifications and your phone or tablet will attempt to match your face and unlock without causing you any interference. If you want to unlock it before it has identified you, your lock screen will slide the security input up instead of attempting to identify you with Trusted face.

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EndPointProtection

Introducing Endpoint Protection

08 May , 2015 No Comments

We’ve undergone some changes in the last couple of months and it was only a matter of time before we started updating our products to suit our new identity. This week we released the latest update to what was previously known as Panda Cloud Office Protection and Panda Cloud Office Protection Advanced. Introducing “Endpoint Protection” and “Endpoint Protection Plus.”

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2015-PandaLabs-Forecast

2015 Malware Predictions from PandaLabs

09 Jan , 2015 No Comments

PandaLabs have released their predictions for IT security in 2015, based on reports and attacks in 2014.

CryptoLocker

This type of malware was in the spotlight in 2014, and these types of attacks are set to increase in 2015.

CryptoLocker operates in straightforward fashion: Once it gets into a computer, it encrypts all types of documents that could be valuable to the user (spreadsheets, documents, databases) and blackmails the victim into paying a ransom to recover the files. This type of malware is also known as ransomware.

Payment is most often demanded in bitcoins, so that it cannot be traced by the police, making this type of attack ideal for cyber-criminals – as many users choose to pay in order to recover the “hijacked” information.

Targeted attacks

A small percentage of the millions of new malware strains that appear every month are specifically created to attack previously defined targets. These attacks, known as targeted attacks, are becoming more common and will be highly significant during 2015.

Many companies are unaware that they could be the targets of such attacks and therefore do not have appropriate measures for detecting or stopping them.

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