Security Reminder Phishing e-mails
It is estimated that over 156 million phishing e-mails are sent to the public per day. 16 million of these make it through filters and 8 million of those are opened- Daily. Of those approximately 80,000 people per day give their protected information to this malicious and illegal enterprise. Or worse, downloads ransom ware also known as Crypto Locker and allow for an illegal criminal to now hold the keys to unlocking your personal and professional data.
Imagine what would happen to your business if in a minute, all of your financial records, accounts receivable and payable, customer lists and notes, contracts, documents and more are written in a language that no one on earth can read except for a criminal in a foreign country that wants money to transcribe. And may or may not give you access back if you pay them and support the Russian, Chinese or Ukraine Mob. This is just one of the scenarios that phishing e-mails can introduce. Grabbing financial data and passwords to get cash fast is another nightmare waiting to happen through phishing campaigns.
http://www.getcybersafe.gc.ca/cnt/rsrcs/nfgrphcs/nfgrphcs-2012-10-11-eng.aspx
This is incredibly lucrative enterprise for bad guys and people consistently fall for it. The best safe guards to put into place use a combination of technology implementation and human training. Technologies that will help are enterprise class firewalls with port blocking and high function filtering. Antivirus and spam filters help as well. However, with all of the technology that we can put into place nothing can stop our human users from overriding these save guards with a simple click of a few buttons. Training end users is a key component to any cyber protection plan. The safety of your data is only as strong as your least trained person on your staff.
Messages that appear to be from Facebook, a popular local bank, Apple, American Express, Microsoft and many others are becoming popular templates for phishing bad guys. However we have seen a strong number of “you have a voicemail. Click here to download” and “you have an electronic fax click here” phishing e-mails that are gaining momentum. Always be vigilant about your sensitive data like credit card numbers, account numbers and passwords. If you get an e-mail asking for any of this, just DELETE it or contact the company directly and verify its veracity.
So here are some good examples of some recent phishing e-mails that would have put you at the mercy of bad guys or flat our stolen your data or monies. Many now are using logos from major companies that are in our day to day lives:
