Don't Get Hooked - Phishing

Did you know that you will receive an average of 14 phishing emails this year?
Did you also know that 90% of cybersecurity incidents start with a phishing email?
Are you confident you can spot 100% the signs, 100% of the time? Because even highly trained cybersecurity experts still occasionally fall for well designed Phishing emails…

Look out for:

• Urgency – Phishing emails will often use urgency and importance to make their victims act quickly without thinking through the consequences. A link to an overdue bill or outstanding payment, a document with details of a payment about to be made from your bank account, these are all examples of ways phishing emails will try to make you act quickly, before you notice it’s a phishing email.

• Senders – To try and make an email appear legitimate, the sender may try to fool you into think they are a legitimate contact. They might change the first name associated with their email account, such as Ebay (ebay@gmail.com) , or create new email addresses that look like legitimate ones (can you tell the difference between accounts@microsoft.com and accounts@mcirosoft.com?)

• Look closely at the Domain – Phishing emails will try to hide the actual website they are trying to send you to, such as using shortening services, like https://bit.ly/3JMHq9k, or by hiding the real link behind a legitimate looking one, such as www.microsoft.com.

• Too short or too long – Phishing emails usually go one way or the other, either overloading you with information to make you believe its real, or giving you so little information you feel you need to click the link or open the attachment to understand what’s going on. An example might be an email from a known sender that just says ‘here’s your bill’, with an attachment. Many recipients will open the attachment to understand what the bills is for.

• Requests for password or payment – Phishing emails are usually trying to obtain either your password, payment information or personal information. Be suspicious of any email that requests these, or links to a website that requests them.

Be on the lookout for anything suspicious. Double check everything, use google rather than the links in the email, and if it still seems suspicious report it to IT!

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