It seems like every day I hear about another credit union that has been targeted by phishing attacks. The problem is widespread, but unfortunately there's not an easy way to prevent phishing attacks.
Phishing is a technique where hackers pretend to be a legitimate, trustworthy email sender to trick you into giving them your personal information. Spear phishing takes it a step further by targeting people at a company with messages customized to the recipient.
Here are some questions you can ask yourself to find out if your credit union is being targeted by a spear phishing attack.
- Do you know the sender, and is the email coming from the email address you’d expect them to use? An email from a co-worker that is sent from a Gmail account is always a red flag.
- Are you expecting a message from the sender?
- Is the content of the email a giveaway? If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
- Are there grammar or spelling mistakes? Hackers have improved on this recently, but bad spelling and grammar are still a telltale sign that everything isn’t what it seems.
These aren’t surefire ways to know if you’re being targeted by a spear phishing attack, but if an email has more than one of these red flags, it’s a good idea to proceed with caution. Click here to read the full article and learn more about how to protect your credit union from cyber attacks.