The Biggest Threats To Your Business Aren’t Swimming In Plain Sight
From above, the water can look completely calm.
That's one of the reasons Shark Week captures so much attention. The things people worry about are rarely visible from the surface. The real danger is often already moving below the waterline.
The same is true for today's cyber threats. Cybercriminals are skilled at making their activity appear ordinary, allowing threats to go unnoticed until data is compromised, money is lost, or operations are disrupted.
Summer creates even more opportunities. With vacations, changing schedules, and employees working from different locations, businesses often have fewer eyes on day-to-day activity. Cybercriminals know this and take advantage of it.
Here are three threats already circling the waters.
- Invoice fraud and vendor spoofing
Cybercriminals don't always need to break into your systems. Sometimes, a single convincing email is all it takes.
One of the most common tactics is known as Business Email Compromise (BEC). These attacks involve criminals posing as a vendor, supplier, or company executive that your team already recognizes and trusts.
The email looks legitimate, a payment gets processed, and only later does someone discover the request was fraudulent. By then, the money is often gone.
These scams become even more effective during vacation season. When the person who typically reviews or approves payments is away, those responsibilities are often handed to someone less familiar with normal procedures. Faced with an urgent request, temporary approvers may be more likely to act without verifying the details, and attackers take advantage of that.
The solution is straightforward: Establish a verification process. Any request involving payments, banking changes, or financial information should be verified through a separate channel. A quick phone call to a trusted contact using a known number, rather than the one provided in the email, can stop most fraudulent requests before any money changes hands.
- Phishing attacks that take advantage of busy employees
Phishing succeeds because it targets people at the moments they are least likely to stop and think.
Cybercriminals intentionally create situations that encourage quick reactions. An employee receives what appears to be a password reset request and clicks without a second thought. A text message arrives pretending to be from the IT department. An urgent email lands moments before a meeting, asking for approval on a payment or wire transfer. In each case, the goal is the same: get someone to act before they have time to verify.
The strongest defense is not technology alone. It's a workplace culture that encourages employees to pause and question anything that feels unusual.
That could include:
- An unsolicited request to log in
- An unexpected payment request that comes without context
- An email containing a link or attachment they were not anticipating
Attackers rely on urgency to make people act quickly. Taking a moment to verify is often enough to stop an attack before it succeeds.
- Third-party risks that move quickly
When a third-party vendor is breached, the threat doesn't remain isolated. It moves into your environment through whatever access points are linked to your systems.
This is what supply chain exposure refers to, and for many businesses, the scale of it is far greater than they realize. Risk can come from connected software tools within their environment, external providers that still have active credentials, or former contractors whose access was never fully removed after work was completed. These gaps often go untracked, meaning business owners may not have a clear picture of how many entry points actually exist.
Delegating work to outside providers does not remove ownership of the risk.
Understanding your level of supply chain risk starts with answering three important questions:
- Which third parties have access to your systems or information?
- What resources, applications, or data can they reach?
- Who within your organization is responsible for overseeing those vendor relationships?
If those questions are difficult to answer, there may be risks hiding in areas that have not been fully evaluated.
By the time you spot the threat, it’s already too close
Sharks don't make their presence known, and neither do the cyber threats businesses face every day.
Organizations that fall victim to attacks are not always the ones ignoring obvious warning signs. More often, they are the ones that assume everything is secure because nothing appears out of place.
Summer can create the perfect conditions for threats to go unnoticed. Employees take vacations, routines change, oversight becomes lighter, and attention is divided. At the same time, cybercriminals are actively looking for opportunities to take advantage of those gaps.
Our team helps businesses identify hidden risks across vendor relationships, employee activity, and everyday operations before those risks turn into costly problems.
If you are unsure where your business may be vulnerable, schedule a 10-minute discovery call.
Call us at 704.470.9009 or schedule a free discovery call.