Author: Ivan Shyshkou

Phishing is a type of internet fraud when an attacker tries to steal confidential user data in any available way. Phishing is the easiest cyberattack method. However, it is one of the most dangerous and effective cyberattacks. By providing various examples of phishing emails, we will explain how to identify and avoid phishing scams.

What danger does phishing pose?

Phishing attacks are especially dangerous because they target a person and it is impossible to be fully protected from these attacks. Evidently, it is advisable and necessary to conduct regular workshops or other training programs in companies to increase the level of the employees’ awareness in the field of information security.

Phishing techniques have been constantly changing and growing in sophistication. If a user ‘takes the bait’ and follows a phishing link, then he or she is directed to a website that imitates a legitimate internet resource. On this website, the user are asked to log in using their account name and password. As soon as they do that, their data fall into the hands of the attackers, who then use these data to steal confidential information.

Mailing lists are mainly used for the following two purposes:

• Without arousing suspicion, steal confidential information from a person using the body of a letter and input fields (for example, on a phishing site or in a program that simulates internal corporate software)
• Trick the user to download a file (from a letter, a website, a torrent) and do something with it (for example, launch an application, open a document in Word, enable macros), also without arousing suspicion. Eventually, the downloaded malicious file can exploit vulnerabilities in the user’s system and simply steal data

How to identify phishing?

There are several signs that can help you understand that you are dealing with a phishing email, website or message:

• Domain. While phishing, the domain name of the site where users have to enter their data is very much alike the original one. But if you study it carefully, you can spot the differences. For example, using the letter ‘l’ instead of the letter ‘I’ in the domain will be practically indistinguishable. An inexperienced user may not notice the substitution and attackers are counting on this.
• Contents of the letter. As a rule, both the subject of the letter and its contents are composed in such a way so as to exert psychological pressure on the recipient. They provoke the victim to follow the phishing link without delay and with no questions asked in order to pay a fine, extend a domain, collect winnings, delete compromising materials, etc.
• Appearance of the letter. If the letter contains a lot of grammatical errors or an outdated company logo, then it is highly possible that it is phishing. It is also worth paying attention to how the sender of the letter addresses the recipient. If the greeting begins with an impersonal address, for example, Dear friend, or the recipient’s email address is indicated, then most likely the letter is phishing and attackers use mass mailing.

Examples of phishing emails

Fake invoice scam

Let’s start with arguably the most popular phishing template out there – the fake invoice technique. Like many phishing attacks, this scam relies on fear and urgency, pressuring an end user to submit a payment for goods or services they have never even ordered or received.

Fake invoice scam

Finance departments are the obvious targets for this sort of attacks, although there are plenty of potential victims to be duped.

Unusual activity scam

When receiving an email or text stating that there has been “suspicious activity on your account”, alarm bells start ringing at full pace. That is why this scam works so well for scammers, as victims do not just face urgency and panic, but also confusion.

Unusual activity scam

This is just one example of where an unusual activity scam can come from. Any app, website or platform – whether it be your bank or even your Instagram account – can be used by an attacker for this damaging technique.

Nowadays, hackers and ordinary scammers resort to sophisticated methods of social engineering. For example, to make a letter look more authentic, hackers can pretend to be employees of your company. To get fewer questions about the letter’s contents, attackers can send letters dealing with the technical component of a product to non-technical specialists, thereby inducing them to open the letter and take the necessary steps.

Let’s look at more examples of phishing emails.

A letter is sent to non-technical employees on behalf of IT employees. It deals with testing of a new remote access scheme and suggests clicking on the phishing link to check the availability of the service by entering your credentials. The phishing portal’s appearance, design, and the text are tailored to fit the corporate style.

Phishing email for the first script

And technical specialists are sent letters dealing with HR specialists’ paperwork, encouraging them to go through the steps indicated in the letter. For example, arranging vacations or medical insurance.

The following scenario is provided for technical support specialists of different levels. They received a letter from an HR manager on the possibility of obtaining a voluntary health insurance. A .docx file with an alleged insurance program was attached to the letter.

Phishing email for the second script

The opened file looked empty. It was to provoke the recipient to “Allow editing” in the hope of finding the text. At that moment, the account under which the document was opened is automatically authenticated. On the side of our server, the domain account name and the NTLMv2 hash of the password are fixed.

Intercepted hash from domain accounts

Conclusion

Phishing has remained one of the most common types of attacks so far, as hacking a user rather than a computer is much easier. A popular saying goes that the most vulnerable component of any information system is located between a computer chair and a keyboard. A person can be absent-minded, inattentive, or insufficiently informed, thus becoming the target of phishing attacks, and the consequences of the latter are sometimes really detrimental.

The conclusion is obvious. The reliability of the weak link in question must be checked no less carefully than software or hardware configuration. And we at IBA Group offer penetration testing services with additional training of personnel in how to resist social engineering and phishing attacks.

This is the third part of our cybersecurity series that I prepared in cooperation with my team, namely Artyom Litvin, and Ivan Shyshkou.

Stay tuned to discover more about cyber security and read the first and second part about it here.

Author: Darya Drobova

A Short Case Study

Data now drives every role, in every function, in every organization. 

There are a few reasons for this: 

1. Data is now being collected for nearly every user interaction in the enterprise
2. Self-service Business Intelligence (BI) tools and cloud services have made this data affordable and easy-to-use for everyone
3. Modern BI tools deliver real value — they help employees analyze reports and tables faster and more effectively, and they combine with modern storytelling tools to rapidly distribute data-driven insights across the organization

In short: enterprise-wide BI has transformed from a “nice to have” to a “need to have” for every organization, and leaders are looking for new ways to increase the scope and impact of their BI systems.

Tableau offers one way to do just that. It’s the market-leading BI platform for a reason. It gives users a broad, deep, intuitive, and truly end-to-end solution, and we deploy it often for our clients. We have found Tableau to be very flexible and capable of fitting into a wide range of enterprise architectures. Most important, our clients have found Tableau easy-to-use — even by the many non-technical users who now work with data.

For the rest of this piece, we’ll walk you through a case study where we used Tableau to solve a tricky BI problem that one of our clients couldn’t solve on their own.

The Client: Leading Multinational Software Provider

Our client was an industry leader who wanted to offer even more value to their customers. They were a large multinational software developer that serves the pharmaceutical space. They provide a platform that drives clinical trial workflows, and revolutionizes site-to-sponsor connectivity through a virtual site workspace. 

Their customers use their platform for a wide range of virtual tasks, including site inspection readiness oversight, remote monitoring, study startup, and quality control. 

When this client contacted us, their platform was already one of the best-reviewed, and highest-ranked platforms in their industry. Yet, this client wanted to make their platform even better. And they knew they couldn’t do it alone.

Their BI Challenge: Uniting Two Databases Into One Dashboard

Our client wanted to give their BI platform a flexible and interactive dashboard, and to later embed this dashboard into their website. But when they contacted us, their platform had a data sync problem that prevented this functionality. 

You see, their platform stored data in two unrelated databases — Salesforce and MongoDB. Our client couldn’t find a way to synchronize these two databases. The platform’s users were forced to enter their data in both places, and our client struggled to build a dashboard that displayed data from both at the same time. 

To solve this problem, our client needed to build a solution to: 

• Connect the listed databases in real-time
• Link data from them and create visualizations of that data
• Build a flexible, interactive, and easy-to-understand dashboard with filters and other dynamic elements

Unfortunately, they couldn’t build this solution on their own. Their internal BI development team lacked the ability needed to link the two databases and create this dashboard. They didn’t have the time to train their staff to build this solution — they needed it quickly. That’s when they reached out to IBA.

Our Solution: Developing a Custom Tableau Deployment

Our team of BI specialists immediately knew the solution — Tableau. 

Tableau is very flexible, and capable of connecting numerous databases, including Salesforce and MongoDB. Tableau is able as well to create a flexible, interactive, and easy-to-maintain dashboard using both databases’ data.

To develop our client’s custom Tableau deployment, we followed a few steps and overcame a few challenges: 

1. Working Around Access and Permissions. Our client had routine policies around data sharing they had to work through, so we waited to gain access to their Salesforce and MongoDB databases. However, we didn’t wait to start work. Instead, our BI developers used their own personal licenses and local access — as well as test data from the client — to begin to better understand the project, and to define what the solution would need to look like.
2. Connecting Salesforce and MongoDB. This was easy. Tableau had recently been acquired by Salesforce, so they integrated seamlessly. It took a little longer to integrate MongoDB, and to connect the two, but overall we quickly connected all of our client’s databases and data.

1. Designing the Tableau Dashboard. Our client’s designers prepared a dashboard template. We developed the working dashboard according to this design. Our client did make a few design tweaks during the last stage of development — in response to user tests — that we quickly implemented.

Integrating Tableau and their Website. Finally, we had to embed their dashboard into their website, and users only needed to sign in once to view data from both databases. To do so, we created an authentication and site-specific Single Sign On (SSO) process by setting up a trusted relationship between our client’s Tableau server and web server(s).

In addition, we worked with our client to resolve two more project details: 

• Licensing. They had been using a role-based license model for Tableau, which limited the number of people who could access the platform. We switched them to a core-based license model that let users access the platform via guest accounts, and let their servers support a nearly unlimited number of users.

Data Security: We created security settings — via filters associated with user email addresses — to ensure each user could only see the data that they were permitted to see (e.g. their company’s data, their product’s data, etc.)

Dashboard, initial version

Dashboard, final version

As you can see, we added some signatures, made an update in the design of the buttons, turned the diagram in the lower left corner upside down. In general, the changes are small, but the picture has changed. After the testing phase, users found some weaknesses in the Dashboard and asked for some changes to better understand some data. And despite the fact that this version seems to have become final, most likely additional adjustments will be made in the process of work to improve.

Their Results: Seamless Integration Into a Single Source of Truth

Ultimately, we created the solution our client needed, within the timeframe they required. Our solution: 

• Synchronized data between Salesforce and MongoDB
• Gave users one convenient home for all information in all of their databases
• Let users interact with their information via graphs, tables, and filters to drill down into their data, and deeply and rapidly analyze every possible scenario
• Operates without interruptions, and is supported by our client’s internal development team (after some training and documentation from us) 

In sum: Our client was happy, their users were happy, and we closed out the project confident that we hit every target we set out to achieve.

Bring Better BI to Your Organization

These results were not a fluke. At IBA we’ve helped many organizations implement BI tools like Tableau. We employ a full team of talented BI developers — including certified Tableau Desktop Certified Associates – who have extensive experience deploying new tools, expanding existing solutions, and delivering better BI results. 

Reach out today to see if IBA Group can improve your business analytics. Just schedule a quick chat and one of our BI specialists will help you define your needs, design the right solution, and determine if we’re the right partner for your analytics projects.

BACKGROUND

Our client is a multinational technology and consulting firm, renowned for its contributions to the development of computer hardware and software. They required help to identify which projects within the company were generating profits and which were not meeting financial expectations. This evaluation was necessary to optimize resource allocation and improve overall business efficiency.

CHALLENGES

• Profitability calculation and P&L construction for BM Global Business Support projects, including analytics by region, industry, and client cluster.
• Constructing of a calculated target model.

SOLUTION HIGHLIGHTS

• Creating and optimizing applications in IBM Analytics Planning.
• Writing scripts to calculate targets.
• Integration with external systems and development of ETL procedures to obtain data from third-party sources.
• Using a Java user interface for direct access to cubes (via REST API).
• Presenting data both in cubes for data input and reporting cubes, organizing export/import of data.
• Setting up access rights and monitoring the work of users.

KEY RESULTS

1. Improving the relevance and reliability of profit and loss statement calculations for current and planned projects.
2. Stable system operation under high loads thanks to an optimal calculation process and system configuration.
3. Expansion of the system to cover LA (Latin America), EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa), and APAC (Asia Pacific) regions with consideration to regional specifics.

BACKGROUND

Our client is a tire manufacturer with a robust presence in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, and is distinguished by its commitment to advancing tire technology. The client required efficient management of their corporate revenues and expenses.

CHALLENGES

• Development of the existing budgeting system on Oracle Hyperion Planning 11
• Migration to SAP Analytics Cloud Planning

SOLUTION HIGHLIGHTS

• Design and development of new calculation rules and data entry forms.
• Loading data from SAP and other sources.
• Daily monitoring of the system.
• Monitoring the correctness of the calculations.
• User support in different regions of Europe.
• Transferring the business logic to a new solution based on SAP Analytics Cloud Planning.
• Using REST API for data access.

KEY RESULTS

1/ Forms, calculation rules, measurement elements and more have been updated.

2/ Reduced by one-third the number of incidents related to:

• Proactive work with users
• Optimizing ETL processes

3/ A qualified team with competencies in Oracle Hyperion Planning 11 has been created.

4/ A working prototype of the solution has been created through SAP Analytics Cloud Planning in close collaboration with the customer’s team.

Challenges

1. Seamlessly blending modern solutions with the financial institution’s existing legacy systems
2. Providing systems that can handle exponential data growth without performance hitches
3. Navigating changes in financial regulations across regions
4. Continuously innovating in a rapidly evolving technology landscape
5. Data Ocean Design based on the Data Vault methodology
6. Presentation Layer Design for reporting systems – Mart and Dimensions
7. Row Level Security implementation for secure access by end users to the reporting system

Goals

1. Develop a Cloud-Based Financial Risk Analysis Platform
2. Build Purchase to Pay Golden Model
3. Design a User-Friendly Order-to-Cash Reporting System

Results

1. Optimized efficient data management, operational processes: transaction processing, risk assessment customer service
2. Enabled data scientists and other programmers to leverage innovations such as AI and ML efficiently
3. Created a data model for deep analysis, strategic planning, and forecasting
4. Built Purchase to Pay and Order to Cash Golden Models that allow end users to construct reports themselves in a BI tool

Background

The customer is the company’s business unit engaged in training management. Previously, reports on the implementation of training programs were prepared manually: they collected data from various training systems and summarized them.

Business Challenge

The company has several training apps that collect a variety of data about students, instructors, and training programs. This data needs to be collected in one system and automate the reporting process.

Solution

Since it was required to build a solution framework in a short time, we decided to use an open source solution. The IBA Group team developed a test version of the data warehouse with integrated Tableau BI system. Dashboards and reports are now created in this software.

The challenge of the project was that the various applications of the training platforms had to be taught to communicate with each other. For example, there is an application where employees take courses and another application where they provide feedback on these courses. The task was to write a utility that would automatically forward users after completing the courses to the feedback page which already contained the details of the course.

Result

Previously, report preparation using MS Excel took about a week. Now this process is fully automated with a ready-made dashboard in Tableau.

The customer is also able to track and analyze the content: demand for courses, percentage of fully-completed courses, and number of certificates received by students.