Brand, website, and corporate mailout impersonation is becoming an increasingly common technique used by cybercriminals. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) reported a spike in such incidents in 2025. While tech companies and consumer brands are the most frequent targets, every industry in every country is generally at risk. The only thing that changes is how the imposters exploit the fakes In practice, we typically see the following attack scenarios:

• Luring clients and customers to a fake website to harvest login credentials for the real online store, or to steal payment details for direct theft.
• Luring employees and business partners to a fake corporate login portal to acquire legitimate credentials for infiltrating the corporate network.
• Prompting clients and customers to contact the scammers under various pretexts: getting tech support, processing a refund, entering a prize giveaway, or claiming compensation for public events involving the brand. The goal is to then swindle the victims out of as much money as possible.
• Luring business partners and employees to specially crafted pages that mimic internal company systems, to get them to approve a payment or redirect a legitimate payment to the scammers.
• Prompting clients, business partners, and employees to download malware — most often an infostealer — disguised as corporate software from a fake company website.

The words “luring” and “prompting” here imply a whole toolbox of tactics: email, messages in chat apps, social media posts that look like official ads, lookalike websites promoted through SEO tools, and even paid ads.

These schemes all share two common features. First, the attackers exploit the organization’s brand, and strive to mimic its official website, domain name, and corporate style of emails, ads, and social media posts. And the forgery doesn’t have to be flawless — just convincing enough for at least some of business partners and customers. Second, while the organization and its online resources aren’t targeted directly, the impact on them is still significant.

Business damage from brand impersonation

When fakes are crafted to target employees, an attack can lead to direct financial loss. An employee might be persuaded to transfer company funds, or their credentials could be used to steal confidential information or launch a ransomware attack.

Attacks on customers don’t typically imply direct damage to the company’s coffers, but they cause substantial indirect harm in the following areas:

• Strain on customer support. Customers who “bought” a product on a fake site will likely bring their issues to the real customer support team. Convincing them that they never actually placed an order is tough, making each case a major time waster for multiple support agents.
• Reputational damage. Defrauded customers often blame the brand for failing to protect them from the scam, and also expect compensation. According to a European survey, around half of affected buyers expect payouts and may stop using the company’s services — often sharing their negative experience on social media. This is especially damaging if the victims include public figures or anyone with a large following.
• Unplanned response costs. Depending on the specifics and scale of an attack, an affected company might need digital forensics and incident response (DFIR) services, as well as consultants specializing in consumer law, intellectual property, cybersecurity, and crisis PR.
• Increased insurance premiums. Companies that insure businesses against cyber-incidents factor in fallout from brand impersonation. An increased risk profile may be reflected in a higher premium for a business.
• Degraded website performance and rising ad costs. If criminals run paid ads using a brand’s name, they siphon traffic away from its official site. Furthermore, if a company pays to advertise its site, the cost per click rises due to the increased competition. This is a particularly acute problem for IT companies selling online services, but it’s also relevant for retail brands.
• Long-term metric decline. This includes drops in sales volume, market share, and market capitalization. These are all consequences of lost trust from customers and business partners following major incidents.

Does insurance cover the damage?

Popular cyber-risk insurance policies typically only cover costs directly tied to incidents explicitly defined in the policy — think data loss, business interruption, IT system compromise, and the like. Fake domains and web pages don’t directly damage a company’s IT systems, so they’re usually not covered by standard insurance. Reputational losses and the act of impersonation itself are separate insurance risks, requiring expanded coverage for this scenario specifically.

Of the indirect losses we’ve listed above, standard insurance might cover DFIR expenses and, in some cases, extra customer support costs (if the situation is recognized as an insured event). Voluntary customer reimbursements, lost sales, and reputational damage are almost certainly not covered.

What to do if your company is attacked by clones

If you find out someone is using your brand’s name for fraud, it makes sense to do the following:

• Send clear, straightforward notifications to your customers explaining what happened, what measures are being taken, and how to verify the authenticity of official websites, emails, and other communications.
• Create a simple “trust center” page listing your official domains, social media accounts, app store links, and support contacts. Make it easy to find and keep it updated.
• Monitor new registrations of social media pages and domain names that contain your brand names to spot the clones before an attack kicks off.
• Follow a takedown procedure. This involves gathering evidence, filing complaints with domain registrars, hosting providers, and social media administrators, then tracking the status until the fakes are fully removed. For a complete and accurate record of violations, preserve URLs, screenshots, metadata, and the date and time of discovery. Ideally, also examine the source code of fake pages, as it might contain clues pointing to other components of the criminal operation.
• Add a simple customer reporting form for suspicious sites or messages to your official website and/or branded app. This helps you learn about problems early.
• Coordinate activities between your legal, cybersecurity, and marketing teams. This ensures a consistent, unified, and effective response.

How to defend against brand impersonation attacks

While the open nature of the internet and the specifics of these attacks make preventing them outright impossible, a business can stay on top of new fakes and have the tools ready to fight back.

• Continuously monitor for suspicious public activity using specialized monitoring services. The most obvious indicator is the registration of domains similar to your brand name, but there are others — like someone buying databases related to your organization on the dark web. Comprehensive monitoring of all platforms is best outsourced to a specialized service provider, such as Kaspersky Digital Footprint Intelligence (DFI).
• The quickest and simplest way to take down a fake website or social media profile is to file a trademark infringement complaint. Make sure your portfolio of registered trademarks is robust enough to file complaints under UDRP procedures before you need it.
• When you discover fakes, deploy UDRP procedures promptly to have the fake domains transferred or removed. For social media, follow the platform’s specific infringement procedure — easily found by searching for “[social media name] trademark infringement” (for example, “LinkedIn trademark infringement”). Transferring the domain to the legitimate owner is preferred over deletion, as it prevents scammers from simply re-registering it. Many continuous monitoring services, such as Kaspersky Digital Footprint Intelligence, also offer a rapid takedown service, filing complaints on the protected brand’s behalf.
• Act quickly to block fake domains on your corporate systems. This won’t protect partners or customers, but it’ll throw a wrench into attacks targeting your own employees.
• Consider proactively registering your company’s website name and common variations (for example, with and without hyphens) in all major top-level domains, such as .com, and local extensions. This helps protect partners and customers from common typos and simple copycat sites.

Thanks to the convenience of NFC and smartphone payments, many people no longer carry wallets or remember their bank card PINs. All their cards reside in a payment app, and using that is quicker than fumbling for a physical card. Mobile payments are also secure — the technology was developed relatively recently and includes numerous anti-fraud protections. Still, criminals have invented several ways to abuse NFC and steal your money. Fortunately, protecting your funds is straightforward: just know about these tricks and avoid risky NFC usage scenarios.

What are NFC relay and NFCGate?

NFC relay is a technique where data wirelessly transmitted between a source (like a bank card) and a receiver (like a payment terminal) is intercepted by one intermediate device, and relayed in real time to another. Imagine you have two smartphones connected via the internet, each with a relay app installed. If you tap a physical bank card against the first smartphone and hold the second smartphone near a terminal or ATM, the relay app on the first smartphone will read the card’s signal using NFC, and relay it in real time to the second smartphone, which will then transmit this signal to the terminal. From the terminal’s perspective, it all looks like a real card is tapped on it — even though the card itself might physically be in another city or country.

This technology wasn’t originally created for crime. The NFCGate app appeared in 2015 as a research tool after it was developed by students at the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany. It was intended for analyzing and debugging NFC traffic, as well as for education purposes and experiments with contactless technology. NFCGate was distributed as an open-source solution and used in academic and enthusiast circles.

Five years later, cybercriminals caught on to the potential of NFC relay and began modifying NFCGate by adding mods that allowed it to run through a malicious server, disguise itself as legitimate software, and perform social engineering scenarios.

What began as a research project morphed into the foundation for an entire class of attacks aimed at draining bank accounts without physical access to bank cards.

A history of misuse

The first documented attacks using a modified NFCGate occurred in late 2023 in the Czech Republic. By early 2025, the problem had become large scale  and noticeable: cybersecurity analysts uncovered more than 80 unique malware samples built on the NFCGate framework. The attacks evolved rapidly, with NFC relay capabilities being integrated into other malware components.

By February 2025, malware bundles combining CraxsRAT and NFCGate emerged, allowing attackers to install and configure the relay with minimal victim interaction. A new scheme, a so-called “reverse” version of NFCGate, appeared in spring 2025, fundamentally changing the attack’s execution.

Particularly noteworthy is the RatOn Trojan, first detected in the Czech Republic. It combines remote smartphone control with NFC relay capabilities, letting attackers target victims’ banking apps and cards through various technique combinations. Features like screen capture, clipboard data manipulation, SMS sending, and stealing info from crypto wallets and banking apps give criminals an extensive arsenal.

Cybercriminals have also packaged NFC relay technology into malware-as-a-service (MaaS) offerings, and reselling them to other threat actors through subscription. In early 2025, analysts uncovered a new and sophisticated Android malware campaign in Italy, dubbed SuperCard X. Attempts to deploy SuperCard X were recorded in Russia in May 2025, and in Brazil in August of the same year.

The direct NFCGate attack

The direct attack is the original criminal scheme exploiting NFCGate. In this scenario, the victim’s smartphone plays the role of the reader, while the attacker’s phone acts as the card emulator.

First, the fraudsters trick the user into installing a malicious app disguised as a banking service, a system update, an “account security” app, or even a popular app like TikTok. Once installed, the app gains access to both NFC and the internet — often without requesting dangerous permissions or root access. Some versions also ask for access to Android accessibility features.

Then, under the guise of identity verification, the victim is prompted to tap their bank card to their phone. When they do, the malware reads the card data via NFC and immediately sends it to the criminals’ server. From there, the information is relayed to a second smartphone held by a money mule, who helps extract the money. This phone then emulates the victim’s card to make payments at a terminal or withdraw cash from an ATM.

The fake app on the victim’s smartphone also asks for the card PIN — just like at a payment terminal or ATM — and sends it to the attackers.

In early versions of the attack, criminals would simply stand ready at an ATM with a phone to use the duped user’s card in real time. Later, the malware was refined so the stolen data could be used for in-store purchases in a delayed, offline mode, rather than in a live relay.

For the victim, the theft is hard to notice: the card never left their possession, they didn’t have to manually enter or recite its details, and the bank alerts about the withdrawals can be delayed or even intercepted by the malicious app itself.

Among the red flags that should make you suspect a direct NFC attack are:

• prompts to install apps not from official stores;
• requests to tap your bank card on your phone.

The reverse NFCGate attack

The reverse attack is a newer, more sophisticated scheme. The victim’s smartphone no longer reads their card — it emulates the attacker’s card. To the victim, everything appears completely safe: there’s no need to recite card details, share codes, or tap a card to the phone.

Just like with the direct scheme, it all starts with social engineering. The user gets a call or message convincing them to install an app for “contactless payments”, “card security”, or even “using central bank digital currency”. Once installed, the new app asks to be set as the default contactless payment method — and this step is critically important. Thanks to this, the malware requires no root access — just user consent.

The malicious app then silently connects to the attackers’ server in the background, and the NFC data from a card belonging to one of the criminals is transmitted to the victim’s device. This step is completely invisible to the victim.

Next, the victim is directed to an ATM. Under the pretext of “transferring money to a secure account” or “sending money to themselves”, they are instructed to tap their phone on the ATM’s NFC reader. At this moment, the ATM is actually interacting with the attacker’s card. The PIN is dictated to the victim beforehand — presented as “new” or “temporary”.

The result is that all the money deposited or transferred by the victim ends up in the criminals’ account.

The hallmarks of this attack are:

• requests to change your default NFC payment method;
• a “new” PIN;
• any scenario where you’re told to go to an ATM and perform actions there under someone else’s instructions.

How to protect yourself from NFC relay attacks

NFC relay attacks rely not so much on technical vulnerabilities as on user trust. Defending against them comes down to some simple precautions.

• Make sure you keep your trusted contactless payment method (like Google Pay or Samsung Pay) as the default.
• Never tap your bank card on your phone at someone else’s request, or because an app tells you to. Legitimate apps might use your camera to scan a card number, but they’ll never ask you to use the NFC reader for your own card.
• Never follow instructions from strangers at an ATM — no matter who they claim to be.
• Avoid installing apps from unofficial sources. This includes links sent via messaging apps, social media, SMS, or recommended during a phone call — even if they come from someone claiming to be customer support or the police.
• Use comprehensive security on your Android smartphones to block scam calls, prevent visits to phishing sites, and stop malware installation.
• Stick to official app stores only. When downloading from a store, check the app’s reviews, number of downloads, publication date, and rating.
• When using an ATM, rely on your physical card instead of your smartphone for the transaction.
• Make it a habit to regularly check the “Payment default” setting in your phone’s NFC menu. If you see any suspicious apps listed, remove them immediately and run a full security scan on your device.
• Review the list of apps with accessibility permissions — this is a feature commonly abused by malware. Either revoke these permissions for any suspicious apps, or uninstall the apps completely.
• Save the official customer service numbers for your banks in your phone’s contacts. At the slightest hint of foul play, call your bank’s hotline directly without delay.
• If you suspect your card details may have been compromised, block the card immediately.

The outgoing year of 2025 has significantly transformed our access to the Web and the ways we navigate it. Radical new laws, the rise of AI assistants, and websites scrambling to block AI bots are reshaping the internet right before our eyes. So what do you need to know about these changes, and what skills and habits should you bring with you into 2026? As is our tradition, we’re framing this as eight New Year’s resolutions. What are we pledging for 2026?…

Get to know your local laws

Last year was a bumper crop for legislation that seriously changed the rules of the internet for everyday users. Lawmakers around the world have been busy:

• Banning social media for teens
• Introducing strict age verification (think scanning your ID) procedures to visit certain categories of websites
• Requiring explicit parental consent for minors to access many online services
• Applying pressure through blocks and lawsuits against platforms that wouldn’t comply with existing child protection laws — with Roblox finding itself in a particularly bright spotlight

Your best bet is to get news from sites that report calmly and without sensationalism, and to review legal experts’ commentaries. You need to understand what obligations fall on you, and, if you have underage children — what changes for them.

You might face difficult conversations with your kids about new rules for using social media or games. It’s crucial that teenage rebellion doesn’t lead to dangerous mistakes such as installing malware disguised as a “restriction-bypassing mod”, or migrating to small, unmoderated social networks. Safeguarding the younger generation requires reliable protection on their computers and smartphones, alongside parental control tools.

But it’s not just about simple compliance with laws. You’ll almost certainly encounter negative side effects that lawmakers didn’t anticipate.

Master new methods of securing access

Some websites choose to geoblock certain countries entirely to avoid the complexities of complying with regional regulations. If you’re certain your local laws allow access to the content, you can bypass these geoblocks by using a VPN. You need to select a server in a country where the site is accessible.

It’s important to choose a service that doesn’t just offer servers in the right locations, but actually enhances your privacy — as many free VPNs can effectively compromise it. We recommend Kaspersky VPN Secure Connection.

Brace for document leaks

While age verification can be implemented in different ways, it often involves websites using a third-party verification service. On your first login attempt, you’ll be redirected to a separate site to complete one of several checks: take a photo of your ID or driver’s license, use a bank card, or nod and smile for a video, and so on.

The mere idea of presenting a passport to access adult websites is deeply unpopular with many people on principle. But beyond that, there’s a serious risk of data leaks. These incidents are already a reality: data breaches have impacted a contractor used to verify Discord users, as well as service providers for TikTok and Uber. The more websites that require this verification, the higher the risk of a leak becomes.

So what can you do?

• Prioritize services that don’t require document uploads. Instead, look for those utilizing alternative age verification methods such as a micro-transaction charge to a payment card, confirmation through your bank or another trusted external provider, or behavioral/biometric analysis.
• Pick the least sensitive and easiest-to-replace document you have, and use only that one for all verifications. “Least sensitive” in this case means containing minimal personal data, and not referencing other primary identifiers like a national ID number.
• Use a separate, dedicated email address and phone number in combination with that document. For the sites and services that don’t verify your identity, use completely different contact details. This makes it much harder for your data to be easily pieced together from different leaks.

Learn scammers’ new playbook

It’s highly likely that under the guise of “age verification”, scammers will begin phishing for personal and payment data, and pushing malware onto visitors. After all, it’s very tempting to simply copy and paste some text on your computer instead of uploading a photo of your passport. Currently, ClickFix attacks are mostly disguised as CAPTCHA checks, but age verification is the logical next step for these schemes. How to lower these risks?

• Carefully check any websites that require verification. Do not complete the verification if you’ve already done it for that service before, or if you landed on the verification page via a link from a messaging app, search engine, or ad.
• Never download apps or copy and paste text for verification. All legitimate services operate within the browser window, though sometimes desktop users are asked to switch to a smartphone to complete the check.
• Analyze and be suspicious of any situation that requires entering a code received via a messaging app or SMS to access a website or confirm an action. This is often a scheme to hijack your messaging account or another critical service.
• Install reliable security software on all your computers and smartphones to help block access to scam sites. We recommend Kaspersky Premium — it provides: a secure VPN, malware protection, alerts if your personal data appears in public leaks, a password manager, parental controls, and much more.

Cultivate healthy AI usage habits

Even if you’re not a fan of AI, you’ll find it hard to avoid: it’s literally being shoved into each everyday service: Android, Chrome, MS Office, Windows, iOS, Creative Cloud… the list is endless. As with fast food, television, TikTok, and other easily accessible conveniences, the key is striking a balance between the healthy use of these assistants and developing an addiction.

Identify the areas where your mental sharpness and personal growth matter most to you. A person who doesn’t run regularly lowers their fitness level. Someone who always uses GPS navigation gets worse at reading paper maps. Wherever you value the work of your mind, offloading it to AI is a path to losing your edge. Maintain a balance: regularly do that mental work yourself — even if AI can do it well — from translating text to looking up info on Wikipedia. You don’t have to do it all the time, but remember to do it at least some of the time. For a more radical approach, you can also disable AI services wherever possible.

Know where the cost of a mistake is high. Despite developers’ best efforts, AI can sometimes deliver completely wrong answers with total confidence. These so-called hallucinations are unlikely to be fully eradicated anytime soon. Therefore, for important documents and critical decisions, either avoid using AI entirely, or scrutinize its output with extreme care. Check every number, every comma.

In other areas, feel free to experiment with AI. But even for seemingly harmless uses, remember that mistakes and hallucinations are a real possibility.

How to lower the risk of leaks. The more you use AI, the more of your information goes to the service provider. Whenever possible, prioritize AI features that run entirely on your device. This category includes things like the protection against fraudulent sites in Chrome, text translation in Firefox, the rewriting assistant in iOS, and so on. You can even run a full-fledged chatbot locally on your own computer.

AI agents need close supervision. The agentic capabilities of AI — where it doesn’t just suggest but actively does work for you — are especially risky. Thoroughly research the risks in this area before trusting an agent with online shopping or booking a vacation. And use modes where the assistant asks for your confirmation before entering personal data — let alone buying anything.

Audit your subscriptions and plans

The economics of the internet is shifting right before our eyes. The AI arms race is driving up the cost of components and computing power, tariffs and geopolitical conflicts are disrupting supply chains, and baking AI features into familiar products sometimes comes with a price hike. Practically any online service can get more expensive overnight — sometimes by double-digit percentages. Some providers are taking a different route, moving away from a fixed monthly fee to a pay-per-use model for things like songs downloaded or images generated.

To avoid nasty surprises when you check your bank statement, make it a habit to review the terms of all your paid subscriptions at least three or four times a year. You might find that a service has updated its plans and that you need to downgrade to a simpler one. Or a service might have quietly signed you up for an extra feature you’re not even aware of — and you need to disable it. Some services might be better switched to a free tier or canceled altogether. Financial literacy is becoming a must-have skill for managing your digital spending.

To get a complete picture of your subscriptions and truly understand how much you’re spending on digital services each month or year, it’s best to track them all in one place. A simple Excel or Google Docs spreadsheet works, but a dedicated app like SubsCrab is more convenient. It sends reminders for upcoming payments, shows all your spending month-by-month, and can even help you find better deals on the same or similar services.

Prioritize the longevity of your tech

The allure of powerful new processors, cameras, and AI features might tempt you to buy a new smartphone or laptop in 2026, but planning for making it last for several years should be a priority. There are a few reasons…

First, the pace of meaningful new features has slowed, and the urge to upgrade frequently has diminished for many. Second, gadget prices have risen significantly due to more expensive chips, labor, and shipping — making major purchases harder to justify. Furthermore, regulations like those in the EU now require easily replaceable batteries in new devices, meaning the part that wears out the fastest in a phone will be simpler and cheaper to swap out yourself.

So, what does it take to make sure your smartphone or laptop reliably lasts several years?

• Physical protection. Use cases, screen protectors, and maybe even a waterproof pouch.
• Proper storage. Avoid extreme temperatures, don’t leave it baking in direct sun or freezing overnight in a car at -15°C.
• Battery care. Avoid regularly draining it to single-digit percentages.
• Regular software updates. This is the trickiest part. Updates are essential for security to protect your phone or laptop from new types of attacks. However, updates can sometimes cause slowdowns, overheating, or battery drain. The prudent approach is to wait about a week after a major OS update, check feedback from users of your exact model, and only install it if the coast seems clear.

Secure your smart home

The smart home is giving way to a new concept: the intelligent home. The idea is that neural networks will help your home make its own decisions about what to do and when, all for your convenience — without needing pre-programmed routines. Thanks to the Matter 1.3 standard, a smart home can now manage not just lights, TVs, and locks, but also kitchen appliances, dryers, and even EV chargers! Even more importantly, we’re seeing a rise in devices where Matter over Thread is the native, primary communication protocol, like the new IKEA KAJPLATS lineup. Matter-powered devices from different vendors can see and communicate with each other. This means you can, say, buy an Apple HomePod as your smart home central hub and connect Philips Hue bulbs, Eve Energy plugs, and IKEA BILRESA switches to it.

All of this means that smart and intelligent homes will become more common — and so will the ways to attack them. We have a detailed article on smart home security, but here are a few key tips relevant in light of the transition to Matter.

• Consolidate your devices into a single Matter fabric. Use the minimum number of controllers, for example, one Apple TV + one smartphone. If a TV or another device accessible to many household members acts as a controller, be sure to use password security and other available restrictions for critical functions.
• Choose a hub and controller from major manufacturers with a serious commitment to security.
• Minimize the number of devices connecting your Matter fabric to the internet. These devices — referred to as Border Routers — must be well-protected from external cyberattacks, for example, by restricting their access at the level of your home internet router.
• Regularly audit your home network for any suspicious, unknown devices. In your Matter fabric, this is done via your controller or hub, and in your home network — via your primary router or a feature like Smart Home Monitor in Kaspersky Premium.

Attackers often go after outdated and unused test accounts, or stumble upon publicly accessible cloud storage containing critical data that’s a bit dusty. Sometimes an attack exploits a vulnerability in an app component that was actually patched, say, two years ago. As you read these breach reports, a common theme emerges: the attacks leveraged something outdated: a service, a server, a user account… Pieces of corporate IT infrastructure that sometimes fall off the radar of IT and security teams. They become, in essence, unmanaged, useless, and simply forgotten. These IT zombies create risks for information security, regulatory compliance, and lead to unnecessary operational costs. This is generally an element of shadow IT — with one key difference: nobody wants, knows about, or benefits from these assets.

In this post, we try to identify which assets demand immediate attention, how to identify them, and what a response should look like.

Physical and virtual servers

Priority: high. Vulnerable servers are entry points for cyberattacks, and they continue consuming resources while creating regulatory compliance risks.

Prevalence: high. Physical and virtual servers are commonly orphaned in large infrastructures following migration projects, or after mergers and acquisitions. Test servers no longer used after IT projects go live, as well as web servers for outdated projects running without a domain, are also frequently forgotten. The scale of the problem is illustrated by Lets Encrypt statistics: in 2024, half of domain renewal requests came from devices no longer associated with the requested domain. And there are roughly a million of these devices in the world.

Detection: the IT department needs to implement an Automated Discovery and Reconciliation (AD&R) process that combines the results of network scanning and cloud inventory with data from the Configuration Management Database (CMDB). It enables the timely identification of outdated or conflicting information about IT assets, and helps locate the forgotten assets themselves.

This data should be supplemented by external vulnerability scans that cover all of the organization’s public IPs.

Response: establish a formal, documented process for decommissioning/retiring servers. This process needs to include verification of complete data migration, and verified subsequent destruction of data on the server. Following these steps, the server can be powered down, recycled, or repurposed. Until all procedures are complete, the server needs to be moved to a quarantined, isolated subnet.

To mitigate this issue for test environments, implement an automated process for their creation and decommission. A test environment should be created at the start of a project, and dismantled after a set period or following a certain duration of inactivity. Strengthen the security of test environments by enforcing their strict isolation from the primary (production) environment, and by prohibiting the use of real, non-anonymized business data in testing.

Forgotten user, service, and device accounts

Priority: critical. Inactive and privileged accounts are prime targets for attackers seeking to establish network persistence or expand their access within the infrastructure.

Prevalence: very high. Technical service accounts, contractor accounts, and non-personalized accounts are among the most commonly forgotten.

Detection: conduct regular analysis of the user directory (Active Directory in most organizations) to identify all types of accounts that have seen no activity over a defined period (a month, quarter, or year). Concurrently, it’s advisable to review the permissions assigned to each account, and remove any that are excessive or unnecessary.

Response: after checking with the relevant service owner on the business side or employee supervisor, outdated accounts should be simply deactivated or deleted. A comprehensive Identity and Access Management system (IAM) offers a scalable solution to this problem. In this system, the creation, deletion, and permission assignment for accounts are tightly integrated with HR processes.

For service accounts, it’s also essential to routinely review both the strength of passwords, and the expiration dates for access tokens — rotating them as necessary.

Forgotten data stores

Priority: critical. Poorly controlled data in externally accessible databases, cloud storage and recycle bins, and corporate file-sharing services — even “secure” ones — has been a key source of major breaches in 2024–2025. The data exposed in these leaks often includes document scans, medical records, and personal information. Consequently, these security incidents also lead to penalties for non-compliance with regulations such as HIPAA, GDPR, and other data-protection frameworks governing the handling of personal and confidential data.

Prevalence: high. Archive data, data copies held by contractors, legacy database versions from previous system migrations — all of these often remain unaccounted for and accessible for years (even decades) in many organizations.

Detection: given the vast variety of data types and storage methods, a combination of tools is essential for discovery:

• Native audit subsystems within major vendor platforms, such as AWS Macie, and Microsoft Purview
• Specialized Data Discovery and Data Security Posture Management solutions
• Automated analysis of inventory logs, such as S3 Inventory

Unfortunately, these tools are of limited use if a contractor creates a data store within its own infrastructure. Controlling that situation requires contractual stipulations granting the organization’s security team access to the relevant contractor storage, supplemented by threat intelligence services capable of detecting any publicly exposed or stolen datasets associated with the company’s brand.

Response: analyze access logs and integrate the discovered storage into your DLP and CASB tools to monitor its usage — or to confirm it’s truly abandoned. Use available tools to securely isolate access to the storage. If necessary, create a secure backup, then delete the data. At the organizational policy level, it’s crucial to establish retention periods for different data types, mandating their automatic archiving and deletion upon expiry. Policies must also define procedures for registering new storage systems, and explicitly prohibit the existence of ownerless data that’s accessible without restrictions, passwords, or encryption.

Unused applications and services on servers

Priority: medium. Vulnerabilities in these services increase the risk of successful cyberattacks, complicate patching efforts, and waste resources.

Prevalence: very high. services are often enabled by default during server installation, remain after testing and configuration work, and continue to run long after the business process they supported has become obsolete.

Detection: through regular audits of software configurations. For effective auditing, servers should adhere to a role-based access model, with each server role having a corresponding list of required software. In addition to the CMDB, a broad spectrum of tools helps with this audit: tools like OpenSCAP and Lynis — focused on policy compliance and system hardening; multi-purpose tools like OSQuery; vulnerability scanners such as OpenVAS; and network traffic analyzers.

Response: conduct a scheduled review of server functions with their business owners. Any unnecessary applications or services found running should be disabled. To minimize such occurrences, implement the principle of least privilege organization-wide and deploy hardened base images or server templates for standard server builds. This ensures no superfluous software is installed or enabled by default.

Outdated APIs

Priority: high. APIs are frequently exploited by attackers to exfiltrate large volumes of sensitive data, and to gain initial access into the organization. In 2024, the number of API-related attacks increased by 41%, with attackers specifically targeting outdated APIs, as these often provide data with fewer checks and restrictions. This was exemplified by the leak of 200 million records from X/Twitter.

Prevalence: high. When a service transitions to a new API version, the old one often remains operational for an extended period, particularly if it’s still used by customers or partners. These deprecated versions are typically no longer maintained, so security flaws and vulnerabilities in their components go unpatched.

Detection: at the WAF or NGFW level, it’s essential to monitor traffic to specific APIs. This helps detect anomalies that may indicate exploitation or data exfiltration, and also identify APIs that get minimal traffic.

Response: for the identified low-activity APIs, collaborate with business stakeholders to develop a decommissioning plan, and migrate any remaining users to newer versions.

For organizations with a large pool of services, this challenge is best addressed with an API management platform in conjunction with a formally approved API lifecycle policy. This policy should include well-defined criteria for deprecating and retiring outdated software interfaces.

Software with outdated dependencies and libraries

Priority: high. This is where large-scale, critical vulnerabilities like Log4Shell hide, leading to organizational compromise and regulatory compliance issues.

Prevalence: Very high, especially in large-scale enterprise management systems, industrial automation systems, and custom-built software.

Detection: use a combination of vulnerability management (VM/CTEM) systems and software composition analysis (SCA) tools. For in-house development, it’s mandatory to use scanners and comprehensive security systems integrated into the CI/CD pipeline to prevent software from being built with outdated components.

Response: company policies must require IT and development teams to systematically update software dependencies. When building internal software, dependency analysis should be part of the code review process. For third-party software, it’s crucial to regularly audit the status and age of dependencies.

For external software vendors, updating dependencies should be a contractual requirement affecting support timelines and project budgets. To make these requirements feasible, it’s essential to maintain an up-to-date software bill of materials (SBOM).

You can read more about timely and effective vulnerability remediation in a separate blog post.

Forgotten websites

Priority: medium. Forgotten web assets can be exploited by attackers for phishing, hosting malware, or running scams under the organization’s brand, damaging its reputation. In more serious cases, they can lead to data breaches, or serve as a launchpad for attacks against the given company. A specific subset of this problem involves forgotten domains that were used for one-time activities, expired, and weren’t renewed — making them available for purchase by anyone.

Prevalence: high — especially for sites launched for short-term campaigns or one-off internal activities.

Detection: the IT department must maintain a central registry of all public websites and domains, and verify the status of each with its owners on a monthly or quarterly basis. Additionally, scanners or DNS monitoring can be utilized to track domains associated with the company’s IT infrastructure. Another layer of protection is provided by threat intelligence services, which can independently detect any websites associated with the organization’s brand.

Response: establish a policy for scheduled website shutdown after a fixed period following the end of its active use. Implement an automated DNS registration and renewal system to prevent the loss of control over the company’s domains.

Unused network devices

Priority: high. Routers, firewalls, surveillance cameras, and network storage devices that are connected but left unmanaged and unpatched make for the perfect attack launchpad. These forgotten devices often harbor vulnerabilities, and almost never have proper monitoring — no EDR or SIEM integration — yet they hold a privileged position in the network, giving hackers an easy gateway to escalate attacks on servers and workstations.

Prevalence: medium. Devices get left behind during office moves, network infrastructure upgrades, or temporary workspace setups.

Detection: use the same network inventory tools mentioned in the forgotten servers section, as well as regular physical audits to compare network scans against what’s actually plugged in. Active network scanning can uncover entire untracked network segments and unexpected external connections.

Response: ownerless devices can usually be pulled offline immediately. But beware: cleaning them up requires the same care as scrubbing servers — to prevent leaks of network settings, passwords, office video footage, and so on.