Over the last two years, digital transformation projects have accelerated and cloud-based collaboration platforms, such as Office 365 and Slack, have been adopted even more rapidly (no doubt accelerated by the pandemic and increased accessibility via smart phones and reliable internet access). Regardless of which tools your organization uses, communication and workflow apps are an essential element of every organization’s communication toolkit.
Office 365 and Slack help teams collaborate efficiently — regardless of geography — something that will continue as companies capitalize on remote employees to fill roles and find talent in new places. As the number of users has increased, reliance on these platforms for core communications has also increased considerably.
A new target for attackers
Like any other platform where written communication takes place, these platforms are increasingly attractive targets for cyber attackers, who are now diverting more of their efforts and resources towards them. That approach is not new either; attacks on written communications are nearly as old as written communication itself. Communications often hold sensitive information that is valuable to the attacker and therefore a target for theft. Messages often convey orders and instructions, so an attacker who intercepts them can use the messages to misdirect the intended recipients. Importantly, written communication also makes it easier to impersonate someone – so an attacker can pose as a trusted individual.
Modern collaboration platforms have a similar appeal. Attackers have gotten savvier, crafting messages that are harder to spot: their links look (almost) right or contain a hard-to-see redirection in the URL. The email addresses even seem legitimate, and the messages are well crafted. And most organizations have tools that find and flag spam and potential phishing emails, protecting their employees from many of these compromise attempts. We have been trained and retrained to look ..
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