Many of our clients have called us in a panic regarding suspicious emails asking them to transfer thousands of dollars to a certain account or to send classified information. These phishing emails are on the rise and there are some ways you can recognize them and keep yourself safe.
- Confirm Requests – When you get an email from your supervisor or co-worker requesting sums of money be transferred or to send over sensitive information make sure you confirm these request before performing the task. The best way to do this is in person or over the phone. This is the best way to prevent a huge mistake. Phishing emails often times look like they were sent from a safe source when in fact they weren’t.
- Behavior Learning – This can help identify emails that take different paths or act differently from “normal” emails. By observing email traffic a good spear-phishing protection plan can create virtual maps of normal emails and alert you when an email is suspicious.
- Pay Attention – These phishing emails usually contain multiple spelling and grammatical errors. Another warning sign is if the sender’s email address doesn’t match the same format of the organization they are from. For example is says SmithMark@aosinc.com instead of MarkSmith@aosinc.com like the entire companies.