Everyone is desperate to make money fast and cyber attackers are no different. They make use of social engineering in email phishing to exploit those who are ignorant so as to gain access to useful personal information. They manipulate people to extract from them their banking information and passwords to get access to their money. It’s like a coup d’etat. They want to take over your computer and gain access to valuable information.
Use an email authentication security expert
Email is widely used to communicate within an organization. Of course, many emails come in from outside the organization too. It is often open to attacks and these cyber attackers exploit email to access confidential company information and to gain control over an organization. DMARC Office 365 setup ensures email is sent from legitimate domains.
It is one of the most efficient ways to protect against phishing attacks and other email-based threats. Valimail is a global leader in email authentication security, and they offer the full spectrum of cloud-native solutions that authenticates sender identity so as to stop phishing and secure a company’s brand. With sender identity authentication and authorization, they stop fake senders from sending their toxic trash into your inbox.
Baiting
Securing an email system is the IT support’s responsibility, but everyone in the organization needs to be aware of information received and sent via email. They should understand the term Baiting, another kind of social engineering attack. It’s where victims are lured into providing personal, sensitive information in exchange for something desirable, of value and which is free.
The victim may well receive an email that promises a free gift if they click on a particular link. They may even encourage you to click on the link in innocence as it’s just a line to take a survey. The link, though, captures their email address and password.
Pretexting
Pretexting is just another kind of social engineering attack. It’s a more sophisticated form of phishing. The hacker usually takes to impersonating an executive in the company and even engages in dialogue with the target. The hacker usually goes for top employees in the finance department, asking the target person to transfer funds or disclose sensitive information.
The spammer usually creates a pretext, pretending to be someone of authority who then cons someone into providing sensitive information that can allow them to benefit financially. In this kind of attack, someone can get access to your data by pretending to be the likes of a delivery driver or contractor to gain your company’s trust.
Social media phishing
Scammers love using social networking sites and they send phishing emails from a seemingly legit law firm to Instagram users stating that they made an image copyright infringement. They say that without clicking on a certain link for ‘help’ to solve the problem, your account will be suspended.
This is terrible news for some unsuspecting people and businesses who heavily rely on their Instagram- and Facebook accounts to conduct business. Victims are usually asked to put in their login details, providing hackers with access to their accounts.
IRS refunds
Many people submit their tax forms and wait for a refund. But so are cyber attackers waiting. Cybercriminals are up to date when tax returns must be in and when the refunds start coming from the Internal Revenue Services.
It’s happened before and will happen again – cyber attackers make use of Social Security numbers, birth dates, as well as other personal information and even know how to complete authentication processes. The IRS has had to deal with these kinds of fraudulent tax claims for a long time and has paid billions of dollars in falsely claimed refunds.