Phishing emails continue to grow more sophisticated, ransomware is identifying high-value victims, and cloud-native apps are a growing security problem.  Here’s what’s happening right now in the world of SMB cybersecurity.

 Ransomware Now Picking Victims – A ransomware variant has recently been spotted using PowerShell scripts that help identify high-value victims.  Once access to a network is gained, the PowerShell scripts search for specific applications, including tax accounting and point-of-sale software.  The software alerts the cybercriminals if a network has any of these applications, which would indicate they could encrypt, steal, and threaten to release financial data unless a pricey ransom payment were made.  Read More at Data Breach Today

Microsoft Teams Impersonated in a New Phishing Ploy – Over 50,000 Office 365 users have already received an email pretending to be an automated message from Microsoft Teams, titled “There’s new activity in Teams”.  If you hit the “Reply in Teams” button, however, you’ll be directed to a (very convincing) phishing page attempting to steal your login credentials.  It’s just the latest in many emails mimicking Microsoft, which is the most frequently impersonated company for phishing emails.  Read More at Threatpost

Cloud-Native Apps’ Security Lacking – Most cloud apps are secure if configured correctly – but it’s very easy to configure them incorrectly.  In fact, Gartner estimates that 99% of cloud security mishaps in the next five years will be due to customer error.  Software as a Service apps with APIs are particularly risky, because IT departments often don’t even have login credentials to help administer them.  Read More at Dark Reading

Today’s News is Today’s Threat – Phishing campaigns often rely on current events or news headlines to trick people into clicking on an email.  The attacks are now being coded in a way that lets the email content and form be very quickly changed from week to week based on what’s in the news.  Right now, in the US, they’re using the voting process to scam people. Read More at Proofpoint