Another Tip for National Cybersecurity Awareness Month: Recognizing and Reporting Phishing Attacks Can Save an Organization
In honor of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (NCSAM), Hikvision is continuing its series of blogs that offer cybersecurity tips for the security industry and the public.
Last week, we talked about multi-factor authentication (MFA). This week we’re exploring the third tip from Hikvision during NCSAM: recognizing and reporting phishing. Phishing attacks trick people into divulging sensitive information or infecting a system with malware, which would give an attacker access to protected systems and networks. Unfortunately, phishing takes many forms, and they evolve quickly. The good news is that common phishing attacks are easy to recognize. Once you recognize phishing, it’s extremely important to report it to the proper people within your organization.
Here are two tips to recognize phishing attacks:
1. Look carefully at the email headers: Check the "From" and "To" fields for anything suspicious. While these can be spoofed, they can also be a good first indicator of a suspicious email. Here is how to check the full email headers in Gmail: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/29436?hl=en
2. Hover over links and be sure to read the entire URL: When you hover over a link, notice if the website link is different than the listed URL. Also inspect the entire URL from the first forward slash, back to the left, to see where that link is actually going. For example, http://www.google.com.search.us/query.html is actually going to a server called "search.us," not google.com. Again, this can be spoofed in some cases, but it is a good indicator of how phishing links can appear to be sites we trust.
Reporting phishing attacks is essential to help your organization stay safe just. If you get a phishing email in your business email address, report it to your IT or cybersecurity team immediately. There could be a company-wide phishing attack that the cybersecurity team can stop. Once the team is aware of the phishing attach, they can inform and educate their employees.
For more information on phishing attacks, view this blog on phishing hacks as well as this blog on spear phishing. Our online Cybersecurity Center always has resources for you to learn more.
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