14 DAY TRIAL // A flurry of cyber-attacks directed at companies in the energy and oil sector have been detected by the National Security Authority (NSM) in Norway, causing the release of an alert regarding attempts of stealing information.
The organization, which is a cross-sectoral professional and supervisory authority within the protective security services in Norway, says that more than 50 attempts have been uncovered recently.
As such, advisories have been sent to companies, in order to impose security measures designed to thwart the attacks.
According to NSM, the perpetrators send emails with infected attachments to gain unauthorized access to the computer and the company’s assets. These notifications have reached 300 organizations.
The purpose is to create awareness and have the businesses test how vulnerable they are against this type of attacks. It is recommended to apply the latest updates for the operating system and software installed on their systems, as well as to restrict elevated privileges to administrators.
The authority also advises the use of strong passwords coupled with a two-factor authentication mechanism. Enabling system activity logging also comes in handy for detecting suspicious actions on the system.
As far as employees are concerned, checking the legitimacy of email senders is one of the best practices to be adopted.