Cybersecurity incidents are so common that sometimes companies face more than one inconvenience at a time. Just a couple of days after revealing a malware infection, the cybersecurity company Cognizant will have to deal with a phone phishing campaign.
After some employees received suspicious phone calls, Cognizant’s cybersecurity team was notified about the incident. It should be remembered that phishing is an attempt to extract personal information through emails and phone calls; perpetrators of these attacks pretend to be representatives of prestigious public or private organizations.
In this case, the attackers presented themselves as a cybersecurity services company capable of mitigating the consequences of the ransomware attack the company suffered in recent days.
In this regard, Karen McLoughlin, CEO of Cognizant, sent a corporate email mentioning the employees: “Our staff is experiencing an active phone phishing attack; to protect our customers and employees, it is vital that you do not follow the instructions provided by any user by telephone. This is an attempt to enter our corporate network, so employees will have to stay alert.”
Cognizant also added that it is taking some actions to strengthen the security of its critical systems and applications, so now its employees will need to have a multi-factor authentication code to log in to the company’s various computing platforms.
Shortly thereafter, to respond to the various questions of the cybersecurity community, a Cognizant representative mentioned: “Our employees are aware of the situation; we will also continue to notify you of any updates related to the phishing attack. Cybersecurity experts mention that various cybercriminal groups are known to carry out these kinds of attacks against major companies. As for their goals, cybercriminals often search for login credentials, among other sensitive details.
Regarding the ransomware incident that occurred a few days ago, the company formed that the infection was carried out using a variant of the dangerous Maze encryption malware. In a report submitted to the authorities, Cognizant mentioned that they are still in the initial stage of incident response and recovery. In addition, it is mentioned that some computer systems will continue to show faults due to the high impact of the infection.
He is a cyber security and malware researcher. He studied Computer Science and started working as a cyber security analyst in 2006. He is actively working as an cyber security investigator. He also worked for different security companies. His everyday job includes researching about new cyber security incidents. Also he has deep level of knowledge in enterprise security implementation.