CC of an e-mail I recently sent:
Two recent events happened you might not be aware of, but individually would be catastrophic to a company.
One, recently scammers have been e-mailing companies' accounting depts. pretending to be IRS or gov't and asking for tax forms (SSNs, etc) in lieu of tax season. Major corporations have been hit. If an e-mail or phone call seems suspicious, report it first- before doing anything else.
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Second and more importantly, ransomware has taken a foothold. This malware encrypts your personal files and demands payment (usually one bitcoin or ~$400 USD) for the decryption key before time expires and the key is deleted (usually a few days)
This type of malware is catastrophic because simply deleting the malware does not solve the issue. Only payment will allow access to your now-heavily-encrypted files.
The problem comes in the form of advertisements. Large ad companies are serving this type of malware, and you don't need to download anything yourself for it to run. It will simply exploit browser plugins or the browser itself when shown. The ad gets loaded onto the page, and you're infected.
The "large ad networks" is also a problem since they host websites like Facebook, Google, Twitter, Amazon, eBay, and the like. Browse Facebook, get your files encrypted, pay $400 per device infected. No download required. This affects both Windows and Macintosh.
Updates, AdBlock Plus, and EMET will help solve this.
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Protect yourself beforehand. Once either of these slip by your defenses IT WILL BE TOO LATE. There's nothing you can do at that point.
