In April 2019, it was estimated that 293.6 billion emails are sent around the globe each day.
So, it’s easy to see why emails are exploited by hackers.
By casting the net wide, some inevitably defeat the spam filter and end up in inboxes with emails from trusted sources.
Phishing is the act of attempting to manipulate the recipient of a malicious email into opening and engaging with it. A sender of a malicious email intends to deceive a victim by making the email seem important and from a reputable source.
The number of spam emails sent on a daily basis is set to increase to almost 190 billion a day by 2023.
It’s increasingly important to be able to spot the tell tale signs of fraudulent emails.
So, what do you need to look out for?
Fraudulent emails are disguised to look authentic. They may imitate the style of your current company or a business such as a bank or credit card company. However, you should never click on any links asking for personal credentials.
Phishing emails often come from an address that appears to be legitimate. Have a closer look and discrepancies can be spotted. These emails may contain the names of genuine companies and replicate your business sites and contacts. Brand logos and trademarks are not assurances that the email is ok, because hackers simply download these from the internet to deceive.
Even anti-virus badges can be inserted into emails!
A phishing email can sometimes contain poor language in the body of the message. Grammatical errors and conflicting sentence structure are common in fraudulent emails. Poor grammar is a giveaway, but not every email of this type will feature errors, so it’s always important to stay alert.
Many phishing emails are successful because they create scenarios which instill worry and fear into the recipient. Then to rectify the scenario created, the user needs to enter their personal credentials.
For example, an email may state that your account will be closed if you don’t act now – usually by entering your personal information. If you’re ever unsure of why an email is asking you for information, contact the company it’s from to check whether it’s genuine.
Be aware if you receive an email with an attachment from a seemingly random company that you don’t affiliate with and the email references something unusual. The attachment may include some malicious malware or virus.
Send the emails to your IT team or IT support provider.
Raise awareness of phishing email scams and what to look out for. This is one way to bolster a company’s defence to cyber attacks, but there are other ways too.
Adopting Multi Factor Authentication acts as an additional layer of security. This is in case credentials are submitted via malicious links. If a hacker tries to access any accounts(s) the user will receive a notification via SMS messaging or a phone call. If you are not trying to access the account in question at that time, you’ll know you’ve been breached.
If a user’s credentials have been stolen, then they normally become available on the Dark Web. We offer Dark Web Monitoring for domain names, where we provide a daily scan of the Dark Web for any compromised user credentials that may be for sale there. Take advantage of an initial free report. Then, for a small monthly fee we’re able to set up your domain name on the monitoring tool for daily checks.
We work with organisations to ensure they’re not only
smarter through technology, but safer too.
