In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, multiple US agencies have issued warnings to raise awareness of the heightened cybersecurity risks that Russia and other state actors may pose to the US—not just at a government level but also to businesses and individuals.
There’s never been a more urgent time to ensure digital trust and safety both at the personal level and for our organizations. To help you in this effort, we’ve put together a list of easily actionable steps to improve cybersecurity and digital resilience.
- Phishing scams delivered via email and display advertising are on the rise. Be extremely vigilant regarding where you share personal and sensitive information—always verify the identity of the other party. For example, if an email from a trusted platform asks you to click on a link to log in, consider simply visiting the platform’s website or app and logging in there.
- Update aging and weak passwords to use stronger combinations of characters. Leverage a password manager like 1Password.com or Lastpass.com to update and securely store your credentials.
- Enable two-factor authentication on banking and other important online services.
- Check if your usernames or passwords have been compromised by leveraging services like Have I Been Pwned, a service that tracks hacked organizations across the world as well as compromised usernames and passwords available on the dark web.
- Find out the appropriate company resource to contact if your workstation or prominent accounts have been compromised. If you have the slightest suspicion you’ve been hacked, reach out to this department immediately.
- Check that you have the latest endpoint security software (antivirus, firewall, etc.) installed on your personal computer and your business workstation. These include the likes of Crowdstrike, Sophos, and Bitdefender, among others.
- Don’t be afraid to ask questions—email your security or operations team with queries, or find the relevant internal communications channel.
Advertising as Malware Conduit
While cybersecurity threats are abundant throughout the internet, the digital advertising ecosystem is a unique channel that threat actors leverage in compromising consumers—and the organizations they work for. Phishing and backdoors are two of the most prominent attacks coursing through programmatic advertising, and these can escalate from consumer devices to threaten businesses and government with even more malevolent assaults like ransomware.
Digital advertising practitioners —advertisers, agencies, platforms, and publishers alike—have added responsibilities in ensuring digital trust and safety that are more important than ever. Current clients of The Media Trust should review their dashboards regularly for increased malicious or even suspicious activity and consider blocking unwanted, conflict-related content. Your vigilance will be key in riding out this turbulent moment, and securing a safe future for digital consumers around the world.
About The Media Trust
The Media Trust is fixing the internet by creating better digital ecosystems to govern assets, connect partners and enable digital risk management. Established in 2005, The Media Trust operates as a digital safety platform by leveraging a physical presence in more than 100 countries and 550 locations to detect and remediate security, privacy, ad quality and performance violations executing on websites and mobile apps that harm consumers. More than 600 media publishers, AdTech platforms, agencies, retailers and enterprises—including 40 of comScore’s AdFocus Top 50 websites—rely on The Media Trust to protect their digital environment, revenue, brand reputation, and, most importantly, consumers. Learn more at www.mediatrust.com.
