A great morning of networking, collaboration and knowledge sharing at today's Local Area Marketing & Networking - Norwest meeting fe

Westpac is warning customers against SMS messages claiming that their accounts may be suspended and that additional verification is necessary via a supplied link. Ignore the message and do not click on the link. It is a bogus message. Westpac said it never sends SMS messages to customers asking them to log into their online banking for security or verification purposes. "We recommend you always sign in using our App or by typing westpac.com.au into your browser," Westpac ad

The Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, Kate Carnell, has urged small businesses to urgently prepare for the introduction of mandatory data breach reporting laws that come into effect from today 22 February. “If an unauthorised entity accesses anyone’s personal information from a business computer system, where it is likely to result in serious harm to that individual, that data breach will have to be reported to the Office of the Australian Information

Greater Western Sydney small business owners are being urged to attend a free cyber security briefing on Thursday morning in expectation of a surge in cybercrime over the Christmas – New Year trading period, potentially disrupting commercial and administrative data transactions. The briefing, at Norwest Business Park, will explain why the cyber security industry is forecasting a cybercrime surge and outline implications for businesses of the Federal Government’s new mandatory

Local Penrith businesses have been told that they are most risk of being exploited by cyber criminals because they usually lacked the IT resources to defend themselves. Cyber Security specialist and Chief Security Officer with Local Area Marketing, Burt Mascareigne, told members of the Penrith Small Business Owners Network, that rapidly spreading ransomware attacks use a smart, signatureless software bypassing traditional anti-virus and malware programs that rely on identifyi

Local business owners are being encouraged to attend a free briefing in Penrith on protecting their business from ransomware cyber attacks. The briefing will be held by the Penrith Small Business Owners Network in conjunction with Local Area Marketing on Tuesday 17 October 2017. Co-ordinator of the Penrith Small Business Owners Network, Brendan Harrison, said ransomware had become the biggest threat to small and new business owners in an increasingly aggressive cyber security

More than 23 million messages were sent overnight in a new ransomware attack affecting computers throughout Australia. You may receive non-descriptive email messages with subject lines such as "please print", "documents" and "scans" – DO NOT open them! Delete such emails immediately! What Happens if I Click on the Link? Clicking on the ZIP attachment will launch a Visual Basic Script file that downloads the Locky and executes the ransomware into your computer. Locky then begi

As businesses rely more on digital technology, they increasingly expose themselves to disruptive cyber attacks, so prevention is rapidly becoming a major issue for business, particularly small businesses, who often lack the knowledge and skills to protect themselves. In response, the Federal Government's Department of Industry, Innovation and Science is running a series of free monthly webinars for business owners. Each 60 minute lunchtime webinar focuses on a different aspec

Cyber crime is here to stay and small businesses need to be prepared and alert. That was the message from Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, Kate Carnell, to the 2017 Security Exhibition and Conference in Sydney recently. Ms Carnell said criminals have been targeting small business operators since commerce began. “What’s changed over the centuries isn’t the act of crime, but how it’s committed,” she said. “A burglar is just as likely to break into a co

The credit card details of multiple Australian businesses could potentially be for sale via an online marketplace on the “dark web”. The dark web is a part of the internet inaccessible through normal web browsers, instead requiring specialised software which ensures a high level of anonymity. It is due to this anonymity that the dark web is popular for vendors selling anything from illicit drugs to firearms, including scammed credit card details. SmartCompany understands ther

There's lot of talk about ransomware at the moment, but how does it work and do you really need protection? Well, in brief, it's one of the most malicious forms of cyber-attack you can experience and, yes, you definitely need stronger 'policing' of your computer network than your regular anti-virus protection. Ransomware infects a computer and restricts users’ access to it until a 'ransom' is paid to unlock it. Ransomware variants have been around for several years but have b