One of the ways we sometimes see criminals making money is by taking advantage of legitimate advertising networks and fraudulently altering promotional collateral, including competition entry forms – often from large and otherwise trusted brand names.

The method that makes this type of fraud possible is a commercial Internet marketing arrangement known as “Cost per Action” (CPA) sometimes also called “Cost per Acquisition”, which pays an advertiser for each action they can get someone to complete – sometimes the action is just capturing an email address (for a competition entry, for example), or sometimes it might be as complex as an online marketing survey that takes 15 minutes to complete. Read more…

We’ve all heard the horror story: someone logs into their internet banking, checks their balance at an ATM or goes to use their credit card – and realises that their bank account has been cleared.

As much as we all fear this happening to us, the truth is, it’s not the only example of financial cybercrime. Some hackers won’t empty bank accounts straight away, but rather organise small transactions here and there – adding up to a lot of stolen money over a long period of time.

See, we tend to notice when a large amount of money goes missing from our accounts (although thankfully, it’s usually shopping that’s to blame, not cybercriminals!). But a lot of us aren’t quite as vigilant about double-checking small transactions on credit cards and bank accounts. Things like grocery shopping, iTunes or Amazon purchases, phone credit, petrol… we don’t always keep an eye on the minor transactions that we make throughout our day.

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A few years ago, when early news broke about Michael Jackson’s untimely demise, the Internet was swarming with interested people all over the globe wanting an update. I browsed several websites on that same day, and when I visited my local SkyNews site I was immediately presented with the words “Service Unavailable”. What had happened? Why was this very large and very popular news provider seemingly off-the-air?

The answer was simply that they had become overwhelmed with requests from too many people, too quickly – and their networks and web server equipment couldn’t handle the load. And, to be fair, it wasn’t just SkyNews that day – you don’t have to look far to see examples of other very large international sites that were also affected.

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Here’s a little secret: at AVG (AU/NZ), we’re really a bunch of softies at heart, and nothing gets us feeling more romantic than Valentine’s Day.

But while love may conquer all, it can’t always vanquish cybercrime. We’ve seen first-hand the damage that can be done on the Internet at this time of year, and it’s enough to just break your heart.

To help you have a flawless Valentine’s Day, here are a few tips for avoiding some of the biggest mistakes around this time of year…

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Tuesday February 7, 2012 is Safer Internet Day in Australia. Unfortunately, today’s significance will escape a large portion of the Australian (and New Zealand) population – whilst most of the community appear more or less comfortable living parts of their lives online, the figures from AVG’s most recent Community Powered Threat Report show that cyber-crime is only on the rise.

Having a robust Internet Security suite is essential, but AVG (AU/NZ) realises that software is only part of the solution. We reinvest a significant portion of our annual revenue into community education, so today’s Safer Internet Day theme – ‘Connecting generations and educating each other’ - slots right into our wider message. The older (or as I prefer to say, ‘more experienced’) generations, especially parents, have a responsibility to educate themselves and their children on safe and responsible online behaviour.

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The Internet – a vast superhighway of information, business opportunity, entertainment and vice. Most of us use it, but does anyone really stop to think how it works? The Internet is just “out there” in most people’s perception, and this can cause businesses real problems.

Most of your employees will go online without stopping to think about web server software sitting on remote DataCentres, or the inherent insecurities of the operating systems that drive the plethora of cloud-based applications on their desktop or mobile device. Unless they’re in your IT department, why would they?

Everyone wants an Internet that “just works” and not everyone wants to know how its underlying mechanics operate. In a utopian society this would work just fine, but unfortunately the seedier side of society also sees business opportunity on the web. When a virus works its way into your business, or the CFO falls prey to a phishing or social engineering scam, the cold reality of web and IT security breaches start to kick in. If your employees go online without adequate protection or a correct mindset they are throwing the dice on the company’s behalf. Read more…

We have all heard about the importance of selecting a strong, secure password. The question then has to be asked – why do so many people continue to use weak, easily guessed ones such as ‘password’ and ’12345′?

Probably because it’s easy! Don’t risk it though – it is important to remember that passwords are the first form of a basic online defence, and they provide a simple and easy to use key to a great deal of personal information. Without a strong password, users are placing themselves at enormous risk of fraud and identity theft.

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AVG (AU/NZ) would like to wish everyone stumbling back into their office cubicle a Happy New Year (and hand them a nice sizzling glass of Berocca). New year is a time of change, so we very typically use this period as a chance to set new goals, work on self improvement (both at home and at work) and – here’s the hard bit – stick to the objectives we set ourselves in order to achieve our resolutions.

A time of business re-orchestration…

Looking ahead at 2012, what initiatives will you take to ensure that your business achieves more? What new business drives will you undertake and how will you orchestrate and manage your business processes to maximise profits? Specifically, how will you approach your IT security protection in the new social media connected web 2.0 landscape to keep your data and application assets safe? Read more…

Mobile computing is on the rise. Smaller, faster, easier – in many ways, this approach epitomises much of how we have come to regard technology in general over the past decade. The mobile phone or PDA is no longer an exclusive white collar toy, and the processing power of 4.3inches of touch-screen in our sweaty little palms already rivals that of the enormous super-computers of yesteryear. If you’re an Australian employer, chances are that well over half of your workforce arrives and leaves work with some sort of mobile computing device on their person. AVG (AU/NZ) poses the question – has confidence in our new personal computing power brought with it complacency at the same time?

We think it has. Alarmingly, AVG’s own SMB Market Landscape report found that almost three quarters of small to medium sized businesses do NOT agree that the use of mobile phones in business represents a threat to IT security. Take into account IT analysts Forrester’s finding that mobile development is a top initiative for nearly all enterprises, and you have a fertile breeding ground for a new family of SMB security threats. More than 50% of enterprises are most interested in using mobile applications or mobile optimised web sites to reach out to their customers – so why do we choose to ignore the obvious threat? Read more…

A few months ago, I had my new smartphone stolen on the train. Apart from eroding my trust in the light-fingered Melbourne public transport user base, I learnt a valuable lesson; my device was not password protected, as I found when one of my friends enquired as to why I had been posting nonsense on Facebook. I had become a social networking menace, and any personal information I may have stored on my phone or in my apps was effectively at the mercy of whomever had knocked it off.

And, with more and more people switching to smartphones and tablets for personal and business use, AVG (AU/NZ) would like to highlight the dangers of losing track of a mobile device – although the device itself can be expensive, the potential for your personal and business data to be stolen is huge (and far more damaging).

That’s why AVG has recently carried out our Lost In Transit study, in an effort to educate our community on when and how the average person loses a device that could potentially contain vital personal or business data. Read more…