Ways to Avoid a “Phishing” Scam in Your Practice

With rising tensions between the U.S. and the Middle East, it's not surprising there have been an astronomical number of “phishing” scam attempts lately.

Posted in Risk Management on Wednesday, June 3, 2020

In a phishing scam, an email will appear to be from a legitimate contact, but it will really be from a hacker who wants to steal your credentials and passwords and install malware on your PC.

Because most successful cyberattacks, such as phishing scams, occur when an employee clicks on a link that appears to be innocuous, it is important to exercise extreme caution when using the internet at home and at work.

To keep an eye out for malicious emails and websites, our information technology staff recommends:

• If you’re not expecting an email, question it.
• If someone responds to an email from more than a few months before, question it.
• If the greeting is something generic, such as “Good Day,” or something not fitting for the sender, question it.
• If there is an “urgent” request to open an attachment or link, question it.
• Be very careful of the top three or four sites when using Google or other search engines. Sometimes these are fake, malicious sites. Pay close attention to the URLs.
• Make sure you have all available security updates and patches installed on computers and mobile devices at home and at work.

As always, if you’re not sure about something, contact your information technology consultant.