Dyfed-Powys Police teams up with Tarian Technology for Cyberwatch

Award-winning Tarian Technology, based in Buttington, near Welshpool, has teamed up with Dyfed Powys Police to prevent cyber-criminals using the Covid 19 pandemic to scam local businesses and individuals from Mid and West Wales. The ground-breaking initiative called Cyberwatch, will feature a six-stage series of in-depth Q&A videos, filmed in a Dyfed Powys Police interview room.

Cyberwatch will help you to safeguard your organisations and staff from cyber-criminals and can advise you on how to keep your remote workers cyber safe. For example, our collective lockdown response to the COVID-19 pandemic reflects how computer users can keep their own machines virus-free throughout the widespread trend of home working, as well as keeping themselves healthy.

The global pandemic, caused by the Covid 19 virus, has led to millions of people from all over the world suddenly working from home, often miles away from their secured company network. Many workers left their offices unexpectedly, overnight in late March, packing up their work laptops and mobiles to set up on their own Wi-Fi in their own homes. This left millions of workers more susceptible than ever before to modern ‘cyber-crimes’, such as phishing, ransomware and fraud.

Covid 19 is a biological virus that has caused a global pandemic. It has claimed more than 40,000 lives in the UK, 925,000 lives across the world and has plunged the world’s major economies into recession. Biological viruses, in common with computer viruses, can’t reproduce on their own – they need a host to help them to thrive and spread. Most scientists believe that Covid 19 emerged from horseshoe bats and was passed on to humans, via an intermediate animal, such as an unsuspecting pangolin.

Meanwhile, computer viruses were first created in laboratories in the 1940s by researchers who were interested in computer programs that could replicate themselves, in a similar way to how viruses gain control of a human body. A computer virus seeks a host, typically a file, which will allow the virus to spread and infect the next computer, and the next. There are around 100,000 computer viruses globally and they work by destroying data, or causing permanent damage to your computer’s hard drive.

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Biological and computer viruses lots in common: They are both spread by people They are both impossible to spot with the naked eye They both need a host to replicate in They can both mutate to avoid detection They can both lie dormant and undetected before causing lasting damage For example, the Michelangelo virus remained dormant until March 6, the birthday of the famed Renaissance artist it was named after. The virus disrupted operating systems and once a system was infected, the virus infected any floppy disk inserted into the machine, then travelled to a new machine where it would lay dormant until March 6.

Cyber-criminals are now devising Apps claiming to offer information about COVID-19 but are allowing tracking or stealing personal information Hackers are using the COVID-19 outbreak to trick victims into downloading booby-trapped documents to spread malware and ransomware, even among health centres and those who are trying to save lives. And insurer, Beazley, says it has seen a 25% spike in clients being hit by ransomware in the first quarter of 2020, compared to last year. Cyberwatch will help you to keep your businesses safe from cyber-attacks.

Watch this space: https://www.tarian.tech/media for six, monthly Cyberwatch broadcasts by Detective Gareth Jordan, and Tarian Technology’s Cyber Business Lead Dan Edmunds (Dan.Edmunds@Tarian.Tech), that will offer you invaluable, expert advice on how to protect your business.

If you are a victim of a Cyber-Crime: please contact Dyfed-Powys Police on 101.