There is now a more effective path, and it does not require users to memorize anything. 

Passkey migration is the process of moving from traditional passwords to passkeys: a form of phishing-resistant authentication that uses your device’s built-in security instead of a shared secret. 

It is practical, it is already supported by most major platforms, and the business case is hard to argue with.

Why Passwords Are Still the Biggest Risk

Passwords have had sixty years to prove themselves. The data tells a consistent story.

More than 80% of data breaches involve compromised credentials, a figure that has remained consistent year after year, according to the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report.

The underlying problem has not changed: passwords are shared secrets that must be stored somewhere, and secrets that get stored eventually get stolen.

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) reduced that risk significantly and remains an important baseline. But SMS-based codes, still the most common form of MFA, have a known weakness. 

Modern phishing kits can intercept a one-time code in real time: a convincing fake login page captures both the password and the code, and uses them on the real site before the session expires.

Phishing-resistant authentication closes that gap by design. Passkeys make it technically impossible for a fraudulent page to trigger login on your real device, because the credential is cryptographically bound to the legitimate domain.

What a Passkey Actually Is

A passkey is a cryptographic credential. This means that instead of a shared password stored on a server, your device creates a matched pair of digital keys when you register with a service.

The private key stays on your device and never leaves it. The public key goes to the service. 

When you log in, your device uses biometrics (Face ID, a fingerprint, or Windows Hello) or a device PIN to sign a cryptographic challenge from the server. The server verifies the signature using the public key. No password is ever transmitted.

A passkey cannot be phished, because a fraudulent login page cannot trigger authentication on your real device. It cannot be reused, because it is bound to a specific domain. And it cannot be exposed in a server-side breach, because the private key never exists outside your device.

Passkeys are built on the FIDO2 (Fast IDentity Online 2) and WebAuthn open standards, backed jointly by Apple, Google, and Microsoft. The FIDO Alliance reported that more than 15 billion online accounts now support passkey sign-in, double the figure from the year before.

What Passkey Migration Actually Means

Passkey migration is not a single cutover. It is a gradual transition that runs passwords and passkeys in parallel until passkeys are established across the accounts and platforms that matter.

A migration plan typically covers three things: 

1. Which platforms already support passkeys
2. Which users to start with
3. What fallback options exist for tools that are not yet ready

For most business teams running Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, the infrastructure is already in place.

Microsoft enabled passkeys through Entra ID and made them the default sign-in for new accounts in May 2025. Google has supported passkeys for Workspace accounts since 2023. For teams in either ecosystem, passkey migration can begin without new infrastructure.

How to Approach Migration Without Disrupting Your Team

Start where support already exists

Begin with administrators and power users. They reset passwords most often, have the highest-risk access, and will give you honest feedback on friction before rollout reaches the wider team.

Map your current tools against passkey support before communicating any change. 

Platforms like Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, GitHub, Shopify, and most major identity providers already support passkeys fully. Start with those. Leave unsupported tools for a later phase.

Run passwords and passkeys in parallel

The most common migration mistake is treating it as a full cutover. 

Users can authenticate with passkeys on enrolled devices and fall back to a password on any device not yet enrolled. Running both methods simultaneously gives time for adoption without locking anyone out mid-project.

Plan for platforms that are not ready yet

Not every tool supports passkeys today. 

For those, a password manager generating unique credentials is the right bridge. It eliminates the password reuse risk now, and when those platforms add passkey support, migration becomes a single enrollment step rather than a behavior change.

The Business Case Beyond Security

Security is the primary driver. But the operational benefits are real and measurable.

Google reports that passkey sign-ins are four times more successful than password-based logins, with sign-in speeds approximately 20% faster.

According to authentication research published by Google, the improvement comes from removing friction. Users no longer mistype passwords, wait for SMS codes, or trigger account lockouts by trying an outdated credential.

Fewer failed logins means fewer helpdesk calls and fewer interruptions. 

NIST’s 2025 update to SP 800-63-4 now requires phishing-resistant authentication as a mandatory option for high-assurance access. This means passkey migration is also a compliance step for teams working toward those standards.

From Password-Dependent to Passwordless

Ready to start your passkey migration? 

Contact us or schedule a consultation to map out which platforms in your environment support passkeys today and build a migration plan that works for your team.

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What nobody checks is their login to the project management tool they signed up for in Q3, the cloud storage folder they shared with a contractor, or the CRM access they still have from two roles ago. 

Three months later, those sessions are still active.

This is how zombie accounts form. nNot through negligence, but through an offboarding process built around corporate IT assets that no longer reflects how people actually use software. 

The average company now runs more than 100 SaaS applications. Most offboarding checklists were written when there were three.

What a Zombie Account Actually Is

A zombie account is an active login that belongs to someone who no longer works for you. The name is informal. The risk is not.

What makes zombie accounts particularly dangerous is that they are valid credentials.

There is nothing to detect. The access was granted intentionally, and the system has no reason to question it. If a former employee walks back in through that door, or if their credentials are compromised after they leave, the access is there waiting.

Industry research finds that 50% of organizations have discovered former employees still accessing SaaS applications months after their departure date.

For most of those organizations, the discovery was accidental rather than the result of a deliberate audit.

The Three Apps Where Access Never Gets Removed

Cloud storage and collaboration tools

Google Drive, OneDrive, and Dropbox are where zombie access causes the most immediate damage. 

These platforms are where offboarding gets messy. Files may be shared with a departing employee’s personal account. Guest permissions granted during a project may never get cleaned up. And folders set to “anyone with the link” access may still be bookmarked.

The departure triggers a license removal in the identity provider. The shared folders, external links, and personal-account shares go untouched.

Project management and CRM platforms

Tools like Asana, Monday.com, Notion, Jira, HubSpot, and Salesforce are frequently provisioned by team leads rather than IT. That means the offboarding checklist has no visibility into them. 

A former account executive’s Salesforce login, or a project manager’s Notion workspace with access to company strategy documents, can persist for months without anyone noticing.

The tools IT didn’t know existed

This is the most dangerous category. 

These are the tools employees signed up for using their work email. A survey platform. An AI writing assistant. A data visualisation tool. They were never formally provisioned, and they were never formally revoked.

When the employee leaves, the account does not get disabled. It sits there, attached to a work email address that may now redirect to an IT catch-all.

Running the Zombie SaaS Audit

Step 1: Build your SaaS inventory

Start by pulling a list of all SaaS applications connected to your identity provider: Microsoft Entra ID, Google Workspace Admin, or Okta, if you use one. 

Cross-reference with billing records, browser extension installs, and email domains showing regular login notifications.

Grip Security’s 2025 SaaS Security Risks Report, analyzing 29 million user accounts, identified 23,987 distinct SaaS applications in use across its customer base. That’s far more than any IT team tracks manually.

Of those applications, 90% remained outside IT’s management. 

For smaller teams without a dedicated identity platform, a 30-minute review of active subscriptions and recent login notifications will surface most of the high-risk tools.

Step 2: Cross-reference against your offboarding list

Take the last 12 months of departures and check each name against the SaaS inventory. 

For each application, ask: 

• Does this platform have an admin console? 
• Can you see who is still active? 
• When did this account last log in?

Access that is months old and belongs to someone who has left is a zombie. Flag it for immediate revocation. Document what you find.

Step 3: Revoke, document, and set a review cadence

Remove the access. Record what was found and when. Then use the audit as the baseline for an offboarding checklist that covers more than the corporate email and laptop. 

Going forward, enforce multi-factor authentication on all remaining active accounts and schedule a SaaS access review every quarter. 

That cadence turns a one-time cleanup into a repeatable control.

Making Offboarding a Security Process

Zombie accounts cannot be removed if no one is looking for them. The SaaS offboarding audit is the starting point.

Want to close the gaps in your SaaS offboarding process? 

Contact us or schedule a consultation to run a zombie SaaS audit and build a repeatable process your team can follow on every exit.

—

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After you sign in, your browser keeps you logged in using a session token (often stored as a cookie). It’s the digital version of a wristband at an event: once you’ve been checked, the wristband proves you belong there. If an attacker steals that wristband, they may not need to beat your MFA prompt at all.

That’s the core of session cookie hijacking. The attacker isn’t “cracking” MFA. They’re skipping it by replaying your already authenticated session.

This isn’t a reason to stop using MFA. It’s a reason to stop treating MFA as the finish line. 

When sessions can be stolen, the practical defence shifts to layered controls: phishing-resistant sign-ins, device hygiene, tighter session policies, and detection that catches suspicious access early.

Why MFA Isn’t a “Game Over” Control

MFA is still one of the best upgrades most businesses can make, but it doesn’t end an attack on its own. The reason is that attackers don’t always try to beat the login step. They try to go around it.

Cloudflare notes that “attackers are finding new ways to circumvent MFA” and that modern incidents are rarely one isolated technique. They’re “part of a chain of attacks.” 

In other words, MFA can block a lot of credential theft, but it doesn’t automatically protect what happens after a user successfully signs in. 

That’s where session cookie hijacking comes in. 

Microsoft has described adversary-in-the-middle phishing campaigns where attackers use a reverse-proxy site to “steal and intercept” a user’s password and the session cookie that proves they have an authenticated session. 

This is “not a vulnerability in MFA.” The attacker isn’t breaking the MFA. They’re reusing the session. 

What a Session Cookie Is and Why Attackers Want It

When you sign into a web app, the site needs a way to remember that you’ve already proved who you are. That’s what a session is: a temporary “logged-in” state that saves you from entering your password and MFA code on every click. 

Kaspersky explains that session hijacking is “sometimes called cookie hijacking” because cookies are commonly used to store the session identifier that keeps you authenticated. 

Attackers want that session identifier because it’s the shortcut. 

Proofpoint describes session tokens as digital “keys” that let a user stay authenticated. It warns that stealing valid tokens lets attackers impersonate legitimate users and potentially bypass authentication measures “like MFA.” 

That’s why session cookie hijacking is so highly leveraged. 

If an attacker can steal the cookie or token that represents your active session, they’re not trying to defeat the login process. They’re attempting to reuse what you already completed, and access the same apps and data as if they were sitting at your keyboard.

How Session Cookie Hijacking Actually Happens

A lot of teams picture “account takeover” as someone guessing a password or tricking a user into approving an MFA prompt. 

Session cookie hijacking is different. The attacker’s goal is to steal the proof that you’re already logged in, then reuse it, often without triggering another sign-in challenge.

1.) AiTM phishing 

Adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) phishing is the “proxy login” trap. 

You think you’re signing into a normal service, but you’re actually signing into a lookalike page that sits between you and the real site. The attacker relays the login in real time, so everything appears to work, including MFA.

Attackers use AiTM phishing sites to “steal and intercept” a user’s password and the session cookie that proves the authenticated session. This is “not a vulnerability in MFA.” The attacker isn’t breaking the MFA. They’re capturing the session after MFA is completed and reusing it. 

One such campaign “attempted to target more than 10,000 organisations” since September 2021, which shows how scalable this approach has become. 

2.) Browser-in-the-Middle session stealing

Browser-in-the-middle (BitM) is similar in spirit, but it’s even more “hands-on” from the attacker’s side. 

Instead of stealing a password and running away, the attacker effectively places themselves in control of the browsing session.

Google’s threat intelligence says, “Stealing this session token is the equivalent of stealing the authenticated session.” Once the token is stolen, “an adversary would no longer need to perform the MFA challenge.” 

In other words, the attacker isn’t trying to authenticate instead of you. They’re trying to ride along after you’ve authenticated.

3.) Cookie theft from the endpoint

Not every session hijack starts with a fancy proxy. Sometimes the attacker simply steals session data from the device itself.

Stealing valid session tokens allows attackers to impersonate legitimate users. Tokens act like digital “keys.” If an endpoint is compromised, those “keys” can be extracted and reused.

Invicti explains that an attacker steals HTTP cookies and can gain access. The goal is often to obtain sensitive information stored in cookies. 

MFA Is a Baseline, Not a Finish Line

MFA is still essential. It blocks a huge amount of credential theft and makes basic account takeover harder. But session cookie hijacking is a reminder that attackers don’t always try to defeat the login step. Sometimes they reuse what happens after it.

The practical response is layered and realistic. Make phishing harder to pull off, and treat device health as part of identity. Tighten session behaviour for high-risk apps. Watch for suspicious access patterns that suggest a session is being replayed.

When those controls work together, MFA stops being a comforting checkbox and becomes what it should be: a strong baseline that’s backed by protections around the session itself.

Contact us today for help protecting your login sessions from hijacking.

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It’s usually said with a half-joke and a grimace. It refers to the old box that “still works”, runs something important, and has survived so many fixes and workarounds that nobody feels confident changing it anymore.

That’s legacy debt. 

Not just “old tech”, but old tech that’s become a dependency. It’s the kind that quietly accumulates risk until it turns into downtime, security exposure, or an emergency upgrade at the worst possible time.

A legacy debt audit is the fast way to bring that risk back into the light. 

What Legacy Debt Really Looks Like

Legacy debt isn’t “old gear”. It’s old gear that has become normal. 

It’s the server that runs a critical app, the edge device nobody remembers buying, the workaround that turned into a dependency. Over time, that debt stacks up quietly.

Infinite Lambda describes legacy debt as something that “happens even to the best systems,” “silently accruing costs and constraints,” and it can “accumulate basically unnoticed until it is too costly to ignore.” 

That’s why a legacy debt audit isn’t a theoretical exercise. It’s a visibility exercise to bring the oldest, highest-leverage risks back onto the list of things you actively manage.

The security problem shows up when “old” becomes “unpatchable.” 

The UK’s NCSC guidance on obsolete products says, “Ideally, once out of date, technology should not be used,” and “the only fully effective way to mitigate this risk is to stop using the obsolete product.” 

If something can’t be updated, weaknesses don’t age out. They sit there, waiting for the wrong day.

Legacy debt also looks like basic server hygiene slipping.

NIST SP 800-123 frames secure server operations as an ongoing process: “Maintaining the secure configuration through application of appropriate patches and upgrades, security testing, monitoring of logs, and backups…” 

It also calls out foundational hardening steps like “Patch and upgrade the operating system” and “Remove or disable unnecessary services, applications, and network protocols.” 

When those basics become inconsistent, legacy debt turns into a reliability and incident-response problem, not just a security one.

Finally, legacy debt often hides at the edge. If you have end-of-support internet-facing devices, you’ve got high-leverage risk in the most exposed place. 

The 3 Oldest Risks to Find First

These three categories are where “old” most often turns into outsized risk, because they combine age with leverage: they either sit at the front door, can’t be fixed anymore, or have quietly drifted out of a safe baseline.

Risk #1: End-of-support edge devices

If you’re looking for high-leverage legacy debt, start at the edge. Firewalls, VPN gateways, routers, and other internet-facing devices are the front door to your environment. 

When they reach end-of-support (EOS), they don’t just become outdated. They become harder to defend because security fixes stop arriving.

What to check in your audit

• List every edge device (firewall, VPN, router) and the support status for each one
• Confirm which ones are internet-facing and which services are exposed
• Identify devices that can’t run the current firmware or no longer receive updates.

Risk #2: Obsolete products that can’t be fixed anymore

Obsolete products are the purest form of legacy debt: things that are still operating but no longer receive security updates. That means every new vulnerability becomes permanent.

In other words, there’s no clever workaround that makes an unsupported system “safe”. There are only risk reductions until you can replace it.

What to check in your audit

• Identify anything past support: server OS versions, appliances, old hypervisors, and line-of-business apps
• Flag systems that require exceptions, like the ones with old protocols, weak auth, and special firewall rules
• Find the “business-critical but unsupported” systems

Risk #3: “It still works” servers with neglected basics

This is the sneakiest risk because it looks normal. 

The server is supported. The hardware runs. Nobody’s complaining. But the basics have drifted: patching is inconsistent, unnecessary services are still running, and backups haven’t been proven under pressure.

SP 800-123 Guide to General Server Security frames secure server operations as an ongoing discipline, including “patches and upgrades,” “monitoring of logs,” and “backups.” 

It also calls out core hardening steps like “Patch and upgrade the operating system” and “Remove or disable unnecessary services, applications, and network protocols.” 

Those are the unglamorous fundamentals that stop small problems from turning into long outages.

What to check in your audit

• Patch reality: what’s the current patch level and how often do updates slip?
• Service sprawl: what’s running that doesn’t need to be running?
• Admin and service accounts: where are the broad permissions and shared credentials?
• Backup confidence: when was the last restore test and did it succeed?
• Change control: who can make changes, and how are they tracked?

Stop Carrying Silent Risk

Legacy debt doesn’t announce itself. It sits quietly in the background until the day it becomes downtime, exposure, or an emergency upgrade you didn’t plan for.

A legacy debt audit gives you control back by turning “we should deal with that someday” into a shortlist you can act on. Start with the highest-leverage risks: end-of-support edge devices, obsolete products that can’t be patched, and servers where the basics have drifted. Then assign owners, set dates, and move one item at a time from “too scary to touch” to “handled”.

Contact us for help running your next legacy debt audit.

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The problem is that the first real test of a SaaS relationship isn’t the onboarding. It’s the exit. 

For many small businesses, the front door is wide open, but the emergency exit is bolted shut: exports are incomplete, key data sits in proprietary formats, and leaving requires expensive vendor help.

That’s more than inconvenient. It’s a business risk. 

As teams move toward a workforce blended with humans and Agentic AI in 2026, your advantage will come from data you can move, reuse, and trust. If your data can’t leave a vendor cleanly, you don’t fully control your processes. Then your options, timelines, and costs are controlled for you.

Why This Gets Worse in 2026

The “backup exit strategy” question is getting sharper in 2026 because SaaS sprawl and third-party dependence are now normal. 

Your business data isn’t sitting in one system. It’s spread across platforms, integrations, plug-ins, and automation. When one vendor changes pricing, terms, features, or risk profile, you don’t just “switch tools.” You either move your data cleanly or you stay stuck.

The breach environment also raises the stakes. Verizon’s 2025 DBIR Executive Summary says it analysed 22,052 security incidents and 12,195 confirmed breaches, calling it “the highest number of breaches ever analysed in a single report,” across 139 countries. 

That volume matters because exits and migrations often happen under pressure. A backup exit strategy is what prevents “we need to move” from becoming “we can’t move.”

Attackers are also increasingly focused on credentials and data pathways. These are the same pathways you rely on during exports and migrations. 

Microsoft’s Digital Defense Report 2025 notes that credential and access key theft attempts are up 23%, and attempts to extract sensitive data from storage accounts and databases increased 58%. 

Microsoft also reports that data collection showed up in 80% of reactive engagements, which is a reminder that “getting the data” is now a common objective. 

If you can’t export your data safely and predictably, you end up trapped. You can’t rotate away from a risky platform quickly. And you can’t migrate without creating new exposure. 

Finally, being stuck is expensive even before you factor in vendor fees. IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report 2025 puts the global average cost of a breach at USD 4.4M.

That’s not a “lock-in” statistic, but it is a useful reality check: data incidents cost real money. A clean exit strategy reduces the chance that a vendor becomes an added cost multiplier during an already expensive situation.

In 2026, the question isn’t whether you’ll ever need to move data. It’s whether you’ll be able to do it without vendor hand-holding, surprise costs, or emergency timelines. 

The Financial Cost of the “Proprietary Trap”

A weak exit plan doesn’t just slow innovation. It quietly increases operating costs because you end up paying for a setup you can’t easily change.

When you’re locked into a vendor, spending becomes sticky. You can’t right-size quickly, consolidate tools, or move workloads to a better-fit platform without turning it into a major project. 

That’s how waste hangs around.

The real cost isn’t the monthly invoice. It’s the lack of options. When your data can’t move easily, every renewal, pricing change, or product shift becomes a forced decision instead of a strategic one.

A true backup exit strategy flips that dynamic. It gives you the ability to migrate on your timeline, reduce duplicate tooling, and make cost decisions based on value rather than inertia. In practical terms, it turns “we can’t leave” into “we can compare, choose, and move when it makes sense.”

Securing the Move

Once you decide to move your data, the migration itself becomes a high-risk moment. Not because migrations are inherently unsafe. But because they concentrate exactly what attackers want: 

• High-privilege access
• Lots of open sessions, 
• A lot of data moving at once

During a data move, your team is often signed into multiple admin-level tools at the same time. That’s where session cookie hijacking becomes relevant. An attacker doesn’t need to “crack” your password if they can steal the session token that proves you’re already authenticated. 

Microsoft has described adversary-in-the-middle phishing campaigns that intercept session cookies so attackers can reuse an authenticated session and bypass the MFA prompt. 

Cloudflare also notes that attackers are finding ways to circumvent MFA as part of broader attack chains, which is why the safest approach is layered rather than relying on one control. 

To protect your backup exit migration:

• Use phishing-resistant sign-ins where possible for migration and admin accounts.
• Tighten session controls so privileged sessions expire sooner and re-authentication is required for risky actions.
• Treat device health as part of access: run the migration from a managed, patched, protected device.
• Monitor for suspicious access during the move.

Ownership is a Discipline

The businesses that thrive over the next few years won’t just adopt new tools. They’ll stay flexible as tools change. 

In a world of SaaS sprawl and AI-driven workflows, that flexibility comes from clean data, clear processes, and the ability to move when you need to.

If you’d like help building an exit-ready baseline across your vendor stack, contact us for a technology consultation. 

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But in practice, a browser extension is more like a micro-SaaS vendor sitting inside your browser session. It can see what you see, interact with the pages you open, and sometimes access the same cloud apps your business runs on all day.

That’s why a browser extension security check matters. 

Not because every extension is bad, but because it only takes one over-permissioned add-on or one bad update to turn “helpful” into exposure.

The good news is you don’t need a 40-page policy to reduce the risk. A simple five-minute check can prevent most extension problems before they start.

Why Browser Extensions Are a High-Leverage Risk

Browser extensions sit in the most sensitive place in modern work: the browser tab where your staff live all day. 

That matters because extensions aren’t just “apps”. They’re granted special authorisations inside the browser. That makes them attractive targets and gives them leverage that’s disproportionate to how “small” they feel. 

UC Berkeley’s guidance says extensions get “special authorisations,” and the more you install, the bigger the attack surface becomes.

The risk is often permission-based. OWASP calls out “permissions overreach” as a core problem. Extensions can request more access than they need, including access to “all tabs, browsing history, and even sensitive user data.” 

When an extension can read and modify what happens in the browser, it can potentially see data in cloud tools, capture what’s typed into forms, or alter content on a page.

It’s also a “change over time” risk. A useful extension today can become a different extension tomorrow. 

The 5-Minute Browser Extension Security Check

This browser extension security check is designed to be fast, repeatable, and realistic. It helps staff make safe decisions in minutes without turning every extension into a big IT ticket.

Vet the developer like a real vendor

If you wouldn’t give a random supplier access to your customer records, don’t give a random extension access to your browser.

Start with the basics:

• Confirm the developer has a real website, support details, and a consistent name across listings
• Look for a track record (other products, a clear company presence, updates that look normal)
• Prefer official stores and trusted sources over “download this .zip” links

Read the description like a contract

Treat the store listing as a mini security disclosure. It should clearly explain what the extension does and why it needs access.

What to look for:

• Specific, concrete function 
• Clear explanation of what data it touches 
• Any hint of tracking, analytics, or data sharing that doesn’t match the core feature.

Permission sanity check

Permissions are the whole game. This is where a “helpful tool” can become a high-leverage risk.

Microsoft’s Edge Add-ons policies say extensions “must only request those permissions that are essential for functioning,” and requesting permissions for “future proofing” is “not allowed.”

How to do a fast check:

• Ask: “Does this permission match the feature?” If not, it’s a red flag.
• Be cautious of anything that effectively means “read and change everything you do in the browser.”
• Remember: Google even publishes guidance for admins to “evaluate the security risk” of different extension permissions.

Check updates and change risk

Extensions aren’t static. They update. And updates can change what the extension can do.

Two things to watch:

• Permission creep: If an extension suddenly requests new permissions, you should be wary. And if you can’t justify it, “it’s probably better to uninstall”
• Update abuse: Treat unexpected permission changes or sudden feature shifts as a reason to pause and escalate

Decide: approve, avoid, or escalate

You don’t need a committee for every install. 

You need a simple decision tree:

• Approve when the vendor is credible, the purpose is clear, and permissions are tight and match the feature
• Avoid when the extension is vague, over-permissioned, or feels like it wants access “just in case”
• Escalate when it’s genuinely useful but touches sensitive systems or asks for broad permissions. 
• Have IT review it and, if approved, add it to an allowlist

From “Quick Install” to Clear Standards

Browser extensions aren’t “bad”. Unvetted extensions are the problem.

A simple browser extension security check turns installs from impulse decisions into repeatable standards. 

You’re not trying to slow people down. You’re trying to make sure the tools that live inside your browser have a clear purpose, tight permissions, and a vendor you’d actually trust.

Start small. Reduce extension sprawl, treat permission changes as a red flag, and escalate anything that touches sensitive systems. 

Then make it easier for staff to do the right thing by default with an approved list and browser-level controls. When installs are standardised, extensions stop being a hidden risk and become just another managed part of the environment.

Contact us today to schedule a browser extension audit.

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That’s why LinkedIn recruitment scams work so well inside real businesses. 

They don’t arrive as malware. They arrive as a normal conversation that nudges someone toward one small action: click this link, open this file, “verify” this detail, move the chat to a different app.

A few simple checks, a couple of hard-stop rules, and an easy way to report suspicious outreach can shut these scams down without slowing anyone down.

LinkedIn Recruitment Scams

LinkedIn recruitment scams artfully blend into normal professional behaviour. 

The message doesn’t look like a “cyber attack.” It looks like networking, and it borrows credibility from recognisable brands, polished profiles, and familiar hiring language. 

At platform scale, the volume is also hard to wrap your head around. 

Rest of World reports that LinkedIn said it “identified and removed 80.6 million fake accounts” at registration from July to December 2024. A LinkedIn spokesperson claimed “over 99%” of the fake accounts they remove are detected proactively before anyone reports them. 

Even with that level of detection, enough scam activity still leaks through to reach real employees. That’s especially true when scammers tailor their approach to what looks credible in a specific industry and location.

The other reason these scams succeed is that they follow a predictable persuasion pattern: urgency, authority, and a quick push to “do the next step.” 

The FTC describes scammers impersonating well-known companies and then steering targets toward actions that create leverage. These actions include handing over sensitive personal information or sending money for “equipment” or other upfront costs. 

Once someone is rushed into treating the process as real, the scam doesn’t need to be technically sophisticated. It just needs the victim to keep moving.

The Scam Pattern Most Teams Miss

1. A polished approach on LinkedIn

The profile looks credible enough, the role sounds plausible, and the message is written in a professional tone. The job post itself may still be oddly generic, though. 

Amoria Bond notes that fake job postings often “lack details” and lean on broad language to catch as many people as possible.

2. A quick push off-platform

The conversation shifts to email, WhatsApp/Telegram, or a “recruitment portal” link. That shift is important because it removes the built-in friction of LinkedIn’s environment and makes it easier to send links, files, and instructions.

3. A credibility wrapper: “assessment”, “interview pack”, or “onboarding”

Airswift flags link/attachment requests and urgency tactics as common red flags. The story is usually something like: “Download this assessment,” “Review these onboarding steps,” or “Log in here to schedule.”

4. The pivot: money, sensitive info, or account takeover

Scammers impersonate well-known companies and then ask for things legitimate employers typically don’t: payment for “equipment” or early requests for personal information. 

Another variation is more subtle: “verification” steps that are really designed to steal identity details or compromise accounts.

5. Pressure to keep moving

If someone hesitates, the scam leans on urgency: “limited slots,” “fast-track hiring,” “complete this today.” That’s why Forbes frames the key skill as slowing down and checking details, because the scam depends on momentum.

Red Flags Checklist for Staff

Here are the red flags to look out for.

Red flags in the job posting

• The role is oddly vague or overly broad. Generic responsibilities, unclear reporting lines, and “we’ll share details later” language are common in fake listings.
• The company’s presence doesn’t match the brand name. Thin company pages, inconsistent logos/branding, or a web presence that feels incomplete are worth pausing on.
• The process is “too easy, too fast.” If the listing implies immediate hiring with minimal steps, treat it as suspicious.

Red flags in recruiter behaviour

• They push you off LinkedIn quickly. Moving to WhatsApp/Telegram or personal email early is a common tactic.
• They use a personal email address or unusual contact details. Be specifically cautious of recruiters using free webmail accounts instead of a company domain.
• They avoid verification. If they dodge basic questions, treat that as a signal, not a scheduling issue.

Hard-stop requests

• Any request for money or fees. Application fees, equipment purchases, “training costs”, gift cards, crypto, that’s a hard stop.
• Requests for sensitive personal info early. Bank details, identity documents, tax forms, or “background checks” before a real interview process is established.
• Requests for verification codes. If anyone asks you to read back a one-time code sent to your phone/email, assume they’re trying to take over an account.
• Requests for non-public company information like org charts, internal system details, client lists, invoice processes and security tools. Look out for requisitions for anything beyond what a recruiter would reasonably need.

Stop Scams With Simple Defaults

LinkedIn recruitment scams don’t succeed because staff are careless. They succeed because the outreach looks normal, the process feels familiar, and the next step is always framed as urgent.

The fix isn’t turning everyone into an investigator. It’s setting simple defaults that make scams harder to complete: slow down before clicking, verify the recruiter and role through official channels, keep conversations on-platform until identity checks out, and treat money requests, code requests, and early personal data demands as hard stops.

When those habits are standardised, the scam loses its leverage. 

Reach out to us today to make sure you have the latest tools to fight this and other types of online scams.

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Featured Image Credit

This Article has been Republished with Permission from The Technology Press.

The post LinkedIn “Social Engineering”: Protecting Your Staff from Fake Recruitment Scams appeared first on Solve IT Solutions LLC.

Those ordinary moments, repeated over time, are how work devices end up exposed.

A remote work security checklist focuses on simple, practical controls that hold up in real life. Put it in place once, make it routine, and you’ll prevent the kinds of issues that hurt most because they were entirely avoidable.

Why Home Is a Different Security Environment

A work laptop doesn’t magically become “less secure” at home. But the environment around it does.

In the office, there are built-in boundaries: fewer shared users, fewer casual touchpoints, and more predictable networks. At home, that same laptop is suddenly operating in a space designed for convenience, not control.

For starters, physical exposure goes up.

At home, devices move from room to room, sit on tables and countertops, and are left unattended for short stretches throughout the day.

That’s why a remote work security checklist must treat physical security as part of cyber security.

In its training on device safety, CISA stresses the basics: keep devices secured, limit access, and lock them when you’re not using them. Those simple habits matter more at home because there’s no “office culture” quietly enforcing them for you.

Second, home is where work and personal life collide, and that creates messy, very human risks.

The NI Cyber Security Centre is blunt about it: don’t let other people use your work device, and don’t treat it like the family laptop.

Third, the network is different.

Home Wi-Fi often starts with default settings, old router firmware, or passwords that have been shared with everyone who’s ever visited.

CISA’s guidance on connecting a new computer to the internet offers the baseline steps many people skip at home: secure your router, enable the firewall, use anti-virus, and remove unnecessary software and default features.

Finally, remote access raises the stakes for identity. In its remote workforce security guidance, Microsoft’s best practices frames remote security around a Zero Trust approach and emphasizes that access should be strongly authenticated and checked for anomalies before it’s granted.

The Remote Work Security Checklist

Use this remote work security checklist as your “minimum standard” for company laptops at home. It’s designed to be practical, repeatable, and easy to enforce without turning everyone into part-time IT employees.

Lock the Screen Every Time You Step Away

Set a short auto-lock timer and get into the habit of locking manually, even at home.

Store the Laptop Like it’s Valuable

Assume that “out of sight” is safer than “out of the way.” When you’re finished, store your device somewhere protected, not on the couch, not on the kitchen counter, and never in the car.

Don’t Share Work Laptops with Family

At home, good intentions can still lead to accidental clicks. Even a quick “just checking something” can result in risky downloads, unfamiliar logins, or unwanted browser extensions.

Use a Strong Sign-In and MFA

Use a long passphrase, not a clever but short password, and never reuse it across accounts. Treat multifactor authentication (MFA) as a baseline requirement, not a nice extra.

Stop Using Devices That Can’t Update

If a laptop can’t receive security updates, it’s not a work device. It’s a risk.

Patch Fast

Updates are where most known issues get fixed. The longer you wait, the bigger the risk. Enable automatic updates and restart when prompted.

Secure Home Wi-Fi Like it’s Part of the Office

Use a strong Wi-Fi password and enable modern encryption. If your router still has the default admin login or hasn’t been updated in a long time, consider that your cue to fix it.

Use the Firewall and Keep Security Tools Switched On

Turn on your firewall, keep antivirus software active, and make sure both are properly configured. If security tools feel inconvenient, don’t switch them off, address the friction instead.

Remove Unnecessary Software

The more apps you install, the more updates you have to manage, and the more opportunities there are for something to go wrong. Remove software you don’t need, disable unnecessary default features, and stick to approved applications from trusted sources.

Keep Work Data in Work Storage

Storing work data in approved systems keeps access controlled, audit-ready, and much easier to recover if something goes wrong. Avoid saving work documents to personal cloud accounts or personal backup services.

Be Wary of Unexpected Links and Attachments

If a message pressures you to click, open, download, or “confirm now,” treat it as suspicious. When in doubt, verify the request through a separate, trusted channel before taking any action.

Only Allow Access From “Healthy Devices”

The safest remote setups gate access based on device health. Microsoft warns that unmanaged devices can be a powerful entry point and stresses the importance of allowing access only from healthy devices.

Are Your Laptops “Home-Proof”?

If you want remote work to remain seamless, your devices need to be “home-proof” by default.

That means treating the fundamentals as non-negotiable: automatic screen locks, secure storage, protected sign-ins, timely updates, properly secured Wi-Fi, and work data stored only in approved locations.

Nothing complicated, just consistent execution.

Start by adopting this remote work security checklist as your baseline standard. When the defaults are strong, you reduce avoidable incidents without slowing anyone down.

If you’d like help turning these basics into a practical, enforceable remote work policy, contact us today. We’ll help you standardize protections across your team so remote work stays productive, and secure.

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Featured Image Credit

This Article has been Republished with Permission from The Technology Press.

The post The Essential Checklist for Securing Company Laptops at Home appeared first on Solve IT Solutions LLC.