5 Ways to Avoid Phishing Attacks
In a world where new cyber threats and techniques seem to develop almost weekly, some phishing tactics that have stood the test of time and continue to jeopardize corporate security.
The email below came to me from a bogus address masked as coming from one of our owners. This is a common tactic – sending a phishing email asking for important company information from an executive who is often out of the office.
Although this phishing attempt was obvious, some are not so obvious. For all the sophistication and disguises used to lure you into responding, phishing still relies on one of the basic human elements: trust. Unfortunately, a healthy level of skepticism is necessary when looking at your inbox.
When you receive an email similar to the one below, ask yourself:
- Is the email or text requesting me to update/fill in personal information or provide credentials?
- If there is a URL in the email, is it different from the URL that displays when you hover over the link?
- Is the “From” address an imitation of a legitimate address (like my example below)?
- Is the formatting/design of the email different than you normally would receive from the person? Is the logo pixelated or colors off? Is the content badly written or words spelled incorrectly?
- Does the email contains attachments from unknown sources you were not expecting? Don’t open them!
If any of these situations are true, you may have caught a phish!
For more information on phishing and how to protect yourself, read our blog from August, 2015 “Beware of this Wire Transfer Scam” or watch our webinar, “Best Practices to Reducing Spam and Phishing”.
Or contact Revolution Group to learn more about security best practices and what you can do to protect yourself and your company from cyber attacks.
