Beware of spear phishing scams! For those that don’t know, spear phishing is an email-spoofing attack that targets a specific organizations or individuals, and are seeking unauthorized access to sensitive information. Spear-phishing attempts are not typically initiated by random hackers, but are more likely to be conducted by perpetrators out for financial gain, trade secrets or military information.

Spear Phishing Scams

Most spear phishing scams are more targeted than regular phishing scams and usually appear to be from a well trusted source. It’s more targeted than regular phishing scams and goes out to a smaller audience. In the case of spear phishing, however, the apparent source of the email is likely to be an individual within the recipient’s own company — generally, someone in a position of authority — or from someone the target knows personally.

Spear Phishing Examples

There is a simple version where the thieves scours your webpage and uses the contact information listed on your page. Using the information about you, your staff and your organization, they email the employee directly and ask them to log into a bogus email/page they have set up to steal your information. They will most likely try to steal your username and passwords.

How to Protect Yourself

Like all other scams, viruses and malware, start with education. Teach your employees about these types of scams and what to look for. Of course adding antivirus, antispyware, cryptoprevent, OpenDNS and regular scanning will help, it’s extremely important to teach your employees about pop up windows, phishing, and spear phishing. If they can recognize it, they can help prevent it. There are a lot of people in this world that don’t understand cybercrime and what is going on in the cyber world. That’s OK. Us computer people are not Doctors or Nurses. We can’t draw blood! It’s no crime for medical folks to not be computer savvy. As a matter of fact, I don’t expect it.

If you would like to talk to a security expert at Tier3MD, please contact us and we can assist you. 855-MYTIER3

 

Tier3MD is an IT support group for medical practices

 

Phishing Scam

12/17