October is another month to have National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. It is another month of insight sharing for tips and more awareness.
Thankfully, the Vanderbilt University Information Technology shares their tips. Their tips center on how to enhance the user’s email protection from phishing. This is surely a great share for the National Cybersecurity Awareness Month.
Email Phishing
Email remains to be the most used communication platform in the business. While it is true that many messaging platforms now exist. But, email remains to be the best option.
However, this best option presents to be also the scammer’s best option. Yes, their best window of pushing data breach into systems and networks.
Email phishing is when an attacker sends a malicious email to the target. But, this is not mostly appearing to be malicious. Because these emails look professional. At a glance, you sure don’t see the intent.
But, the goal of this attack is for user’s accounts to reveal confidential information. These emails are cunningly formatted to lead a user to click and download links. These links will therefore lead them to gain access to your sensitive information. Also, they can infect your computers and the networks connected- through these links.
Phishing Emails Can Steal:
- Your credentials
- Credit Card Information
- Banking Details
- Internal Data
- PII (Personally Identifiable Information)
- Medical Information
Of course, these are cunning ways of spreading malicious intentions. But before, these scammers used to be direct. It used to be effective. But today, these attackers are more sophisticated in their ways.
Because Of This, They Can Do Phishing Through The Following:
- Malicious links
- Malicious attachments
- Email impersonation
- Account compromise
Kinds Of Phishing
Spear Phishing
This is a direct phishing campaign. This targets a specific individual.
Whaling
On the other hand, whaling focuses on high-end professionals in the business.
Clone Phishing
Also, another kind is clone phishing. It ‘clones’ a legitimate email. Or in other words, it copies these emails and makes it appear truly identical. But these emails have malicious content. This can have links or attachments that lead them to their target.
Vishing
This is an audio format of phishing. What scammers do is use phone calls. It’s either they leave voice messages, or they call users. Again, their goal is for these users to reveal their sensitive personal information.
Smishing
Also, smishing is the text format of phishing. This is a scammer’s another bait to lead users into revealing their information.
Certainly, phishing comes in many ways. And, it doesn’t only exist in the form of emails. It can vary from text to phone calls. Thus, being knowledgeable enough should equip each to be less vulnerable.
What You Can Do
So, what if you spot a phish?
Immediately report the phish. If you are using Outlook, there is an option ‘Report Message’. Choose that button. Them, select phishing as your report.
On the other hand, if you’re not using Outlook you can do this. What you can do is you can forward the email as an attachment. And send it to this email address: [email protected].
