Important Information About A Serious Security Risk

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Over the last week, we have seen an increasing number of email scams. The way these are constructed makes them impossible to fully prevent (even with all of our proactive monitoring and safeguards) and, as a result, it is critical that we all take note of these important reminders:

  1. Don’t respond to emails asking for your information
    • Legitimate sources will not randomly send you an email to confirm your username/password or any personal information.  As a result, never respond to any random emails asking for this information, even if it appears to be from a trusted source such as a bank, the IRS, UPS, Microsoft 365, etc.
  2. Confirm the source
    • Never open any email attachments or click on links that you were not expecting, even if it appears to be coming from someone you know. If you get a random email with a link or an attachment you weren’t expecting, pick up the phone and call the source to confirm.
  3. Trust your gut
    • If something looks suspicious or out of place, verify the source or open a ticket with your IT help desk.  NOTE: Never verify a suspicious email by asking in a direct reply, criminals often monitor the replies and will respond to appear legitimate.
  4. Don’t send money
    • Ignore all emails coming out of nowhere requesting immediate payment, or funds transfers. If you get a request, particularly a random email purporting to come from someone within your company, take the time to contact them via phone to confirm. There is currently an uptick in people using publicly available information to pull off these “phishing” scams
  5. Check The “From” address details
    • Look at the “From” address on all emails. Scammers/malicious actors can use a Gmail, Yahoo or another freely available email service to create an email account and put a trusted name in the display name. This can easily be spotted by looking at the “from” address. For example, the from field could look like “Jane Doe jdoe@companyname.com (jeat8080@gmail.com)” – an attempt to look like it’s coming from Jane, but is really from the randomly named Gmail account in the header.  IGNORE these emails.

In summary – be careful, cautious, and smart to keep you and your computer network safe and secure.

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