Most Phishing Emails are Pretending to be from Your Own IT Department

As you probably know, phishing is an evil attempt to gain access to your private information – or to destroy your computer network – by sending an email that appears to be from a legitimate source. Often, these appear to be from a business with whom you already have an account, such as a credit card company, and the email requests that you update your information, and provide a link to do so. Clicking that link is like stepping on a land mine.

But the phishing trend for businesses is to send an email regarding a security threat – to play on your fears of dealing with a breach. As of 2015, 78% of known phishing emails were security related, and they posed as the company’s IT department, or its anti-virus vendor. And, of course, opening the link in that email causes the very breach you were trying to avoid.

Please be aware of this, and remind your employees never to open an email, nor click on a link in an email, without knowing the source. They should always check the sender’s email address – that’s usually a dead giveaway. Instruct you employees, that any email regarding a security issue should be forwarded, unopened, to a designated person in the company who is in charge of network security.

For more information about keeping your business secure against phishing, hackers, outages, and all other threats to your computer network, call us at 678-389-6200 or contact us online.