Five Tips to Help Employees Avoid Clicking on Malicious Emails By John Miller, Senior Consultant, Sophicity As cybersecurity concerns continue to grow and grow, you will often hear that many data breaches occur because of employees clicking on suspicious emails. It’s obviously frustrating that an organization can implement the strongest firewalls, antivirus software and antispam software and yet still get a crippling virus from a simple email. While it’s smart to make sure you have as many preventative methods in place that block or warn people about suspicious threats before they even happen, even the best of us can still click on suspicious emails. Here are a few tips that will help employees keep from clicking. 1. Look at the email address of the sender. Hackers have become good at creating sender names that at first glance seem legitimate, such as “GoogleNotify.” But take a look at the sender’s email address. It’s clearly not from a Google email account. Sophisticated hackers
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may use a name that looks more legitimate, but email addresses are often an area where most hackers fall short — making it easier to know it’s a fraud. 2. Ask yourself if the email is normal or typical. Suspicious email attachments usually ask you to do something that you’ve never done before. If you feel immediate suspicion or you immediately wonder why an organization would send you this email, then that feeling is a red flag. For example, if the email says your bank suspended your account and you need to download a zip file attachment to restore it, ask yourself if that sounds right. If you’re in doubt, go to the organization’s website or call the organization to ask if the email is legitimate. 3. Is the email asking you to click a strange link or an attachment? If the email seems unusually desperate to get you to click on a link or an attachment, that’s a red flag. Especially be careful about attachments. Any legitimate organization does not typically conduct business through having
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