Protecting an organisation involves many repetitive tasks, ongoing education of the evolving risks, as well as knowing what to do if something goes wrong. There is no secret ingredient!

The quicker we report the bad stuff, the less chance it can affect others. 

• Reporting a cyber security incident in the UK: https://report.ncsc.gov.uk
• Report a phishing email to the UK Suspicious Email Reporting Service (SERS): report@phishing.gov.uk
• Report a phishing email to the Google Safe Browsing team: https://safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/
• Report a potentially dangerous website to Google: http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_badware/
• UK’s national reporting centre for fraud and cybercrime: https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/report_phishing
• PhishTank is a free service by Cisco OpenDNS to report phishing links: http://www.phishtank.com
• Report tech support scams, whether they claim to be from Microsoft or from another company: www.microsoft.com/reportascam
• Report email misuse for Outlook.com and Hotmail: abuse@hotmail.com
  
• Report suspected cyberattacks for Microsoft Azure, OneDrive, & Office 365: msrc.microsoft.com/report/abuse
• Report unsafe & malicious websites to Microsoft: www.microsoft.com/en-us/wdsi/support/report-unsafe-site
• Report email misuse for a Google Mail account: abuse@gmail.com or https://support.google.com/mail/contact/abuse
• Report email misuse for Yahoo Mail account: abuse@yahoo.com
• To report phishing in GMail, open the email and select ‘Report phishing’ from the drop-down menu.
• Report phishing on Apple services: reportphishing@apple.com
• Report a compromised Linkedin account https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/a1340402
• Reporting a possible scam in LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/ask/TS-RPS
• Report fraud to Amazon so scammer’s fake listings are taken down: https://bit.ly/AmazonReportAScam
• Report a phishing or spoofed Amazon email: spoofing@amazon.com
• Report a fake PayPal email or spoofed website: spoof@paypal.com
• Report phishing or malicious files shared on Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/report_abuse
• Report phishing or malicious files shared on Box.com: abuse@box.com
• Report misuse of Bit.ly links: support@bitly.com
• Report fraudulent DocuSign attachments: spam@docusign.com
• Report phishing or malicious files shared via WeTransfer: https://wetransfer.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new
• Report fraud in Quora posts: privacy@quora.com
• Report illegal activity (fraud, phishing and malware) on web domains registered with GoDaddy: https://supportcenter.godaddy.com/AbuseReport
• To report a spam SMS mobile phone text message forward the text to 7726 (spells out SPAM)

Improving cyber security in your business is not just about spending money. Here are 12 practical steps you can take that do not cost anything other than your time:

1. Remove Adobe Flash Player from any machines if installed
2. Remove Oracle Java from any machines that do not need it (see www.java.com)
3. Remove Microsoft Silverlight from any machines if installed
4. Run all users as standard users rather than as administrators in Windows
5. Scan computers with an online scanner at least once a month from a different antivirus company than the one you have installed (for example Eset, F-Secure, Sophos, Trend Micro)
6. Educate your staff about the worst passwords of 2024 and not to use their year of birth as a phone PIN
7. Encourage staff to use personal devices for personal internet use
8. Block any email attachment that has executable content or the attachment's file extension matches .js or .lnk or .mht or .url or .wsf (for more info see Office365 tips)
9. Make sure that you are using legitimate up to date software, keygen utilities often contain malware
10. Install the Avast Anti-Ransomware Protection & Removal Tool (https://www.avast.com/c-ransomware-protection-tool) if you are using Windows Defender as your only antivirus software
11. Consider changing your DNS settings to Quad9 (9.9.9.9) if you do not already filter DNS
12. Show all File Name Extensions so you can spot program files posing as documents like SOMETHING.DOC.EXE or SOMETHING.PDF.EXE as the last dot and 3-4 characters would normally be hidden on Microsoft Windows machines

For more details & info about the above steps, see the latest version of my Internet Security Fundamentals eBook.

The Metropolitan Police created the free Little series of books and videos to explain some of the most common scams and give advice on how to avoid falling victim to them. 

https://www.met.police.uk/police-forces/metropolitan-police/areas/campaigns/2019/little-guide-preventing-fraud/

Starting in Windows 10, version 1803, Windows no longer automatically backs up the system registry to the RegBack folder. You can re-enable it by configuring the following registry entry, and then restarting the computer:

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Configuration Manager\EnablePeriodicBackup

Type: REG_DWORD

Value: 1

For more info, see: https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/4509719/the-system-registry-is-no-longer-backed-up-to-the-regback-folder-start