His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) recently announced that it has been hit by a sophisticated phishing scam, which resulted in the theft of approximately £47 million ($63.76 million) from over 100,000 taxpayer accounts. The attack took place in... Read More
Blog
SIM-swap fraud: Scam prevention guide
SIM-swapping is quickly becoming a favorite form of attack for cybercriminals. According to the National Fraud Database, SIM-swap fraud jumped by over 1,000% in 2024. Hackers port a victim’s number onto a rogue SIM, so they can intercept SMS-based... Read More
Introducing Specops Service Desk for Cloud (Entra ID)
The service desk has become a prime target for sophisticated social‐engineering campaigns. It’s never been more important to arm frontline support teams with the tools they need to verify every caller from a potential liability into a confirmed identity.... Read More
Password encryption: What is it and how does it work?
As companies rapidly shift towards cloud-based environments, employees find themselves juggling multiple accounts across a variety of platforms, each one most likely safeguarded by a password. These digital keys are often the first (and sometimes only) line of defense... Read More
Credential harvesting: How it works & tips for prevention
Credential harvesting represents a serious threat to organizations of all kinds – particularly in today’s digital landscape, where virtually every enterprise depends on user credentials for access and security. According to IBM’s 2025 Threat Intelligence Index, nearly a third... Read More
[New research] FTP ports under attack: Which passwords are hackers using?
The Specops research team has analyzed passwords being used to attack FTP ports over the past 30 days, in live attacks happening against real networks. Our team have found the most common passwords being used in brute force attacks,... Read More
DragonForce: Inside the Ransomware-as-a-Service group
The popularity of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) has exploded over the past decade. The benefits for organizations are obvious – SaaS is scalable, cost-effective, and doesn’t need complex installation or maintenance. Gartner expects global spending on SaaS to reach $3 billion... Read More
Scattered Spider service desk attacks: How to defend your organization
Scattered Spider is a disparate hacking collective that has surged to prominence by using sophisticated social engineering tactics. One of their key tactics is exploiting people – specifically, corporate service desks. They’ve recently hit the headlines by allegedly duping... Read More
M&S ransomware hack: Active Directory & Service Desk security lessons
M&S (Marks and Spencers) are a cornerstone of British retail with over 64,000 employees – so it was a shock for many to see them laid low by a ransomware attack in April 2025. The retail giant fell victim... Read More
Could the Spain and Portugal blackout have been a cyber-attack?
‘Cyber-attack’ was the phrase on many people’s minds when large parts of Spain and Portugal were recently plunged into a blackout. Authorities are investigating the root cause, with early reports suggesting a technical malfunction caused by a ‘rare atmospheric... Read More