SVB’s collapse is a scammer’s dream: Don’t get caught out

Big news events and major crises usually trigger an avalanche of follow-on phishing attempts. The COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are perhaps the most obvious examples, but the most recent one is the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). The mid-sized US lender and a key financer of tech start-ups held tens of billions of dollars’ worth of assets when it went bust last week after succumbing to a bank run.

Although the US government stepped in days later to guarantee customers would be able to access their money, the damage was done – and even if you or your business wasn’t affected by the bank’s meltdown, you could still be at risk of cybercrime that exploits such events for nefarious gains.

Ambulance-chasing phishing and business email compromise (BEC) attempts are already hitting inboxes across the globe. Once you’ve weathered the storm, there’s plenty ...