Beware of Cyber Criminals Posing as Remote Workers
According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), there were 5.2 million identity theft and imposter scams reported in 2022. The U.S. Treasury, the State Department, and the Federal Bureau of Investigations have issued alerts warning businesses that North Korean cyber criminals are posing as remote workers for hire from the U.S., Eastern Europe, Japan, South Korea, and China. This threat emphasizes the need for Identity Access Management protocols to protect data from espionage, intellectual property theft, and spills.
We encourage you to be cautious when hiring remote workers. These threat actors can and will look for gaps in the hiring process to bypass identity verification. They can utilize things like sub-contracts, AI behavior analytics, or surrogates to help conceal their true identity and harmful intentions. Consider working with your Human Resources (HR) department to review and fortify your pre-employment process.
A good place to start when verifying the identity of remote hires is to pay close attention to the following items:
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- Location: A combination of IP address, Wi-Fi, GPS, and cellular data can be correlated with the presented identity to check for consistency and to affirm the identity claim.
- Device: Attributes of a user’s device like browser language and time zone, etc., can be correlated with the presented identity for consistency and identity affirmation.
- Phone Number: Cross-referencing a phone number to the network operator can reveal identity data to affirm or refute an identity claim.
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While your business isn’t likely to experience an infiltration of this nature, it is happening to other businesses of similar size across various industries. To read the full report, click here.
If you have any questions or would like to have a conversation about identity management, contact us today.
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