7 ways to spot a Phishing Email

One of the most common ways to contract a virus or infection on your PC or Laptop is through phishing emails. Typically Phishing emails are designed to look like they are from a well-known and trusted company, usually banks, financial organisations or couriers, in order to trick you into providing sensitive information. 

Here's 7 ways to spot a Phishing Email:

1. Emails often contain links, phishing emails are likely to contain links with mismatched URLs. In Outlook if you hover your mouse over the top of any URLs this will display the actual hyperlinked address. If the hyperlinked address is different to the address displayed in the email, it is highly likely that the message is fraudulent or malicious.                    
2. Emails filled with spelling mistakes and poor grammar are likely to be fraudulent. Spelling mistakes are one of the most common signs that an email isn’t legitimate, as legitimate companies would normally have editors who review their marketing emails carefully before sending them out.                
3. A prompt for personal information should be a warning sign, no matter how legitimate the email may look! Regardless of who you bank with, your bank will never email you to ask for your personal details.                                                                 
4. A common type of phishing email is one that appears to be from a delivery company with attachments or links portrayed as tracking information. If you are not waiting for a delivery or don’t recognise the details in the email it is safest to just delete it.                                        
5. Phishing emails often try to trick you into clicking a link by claiming that your account is on hold or that there has been some fraudulent activity that requires your immediate attention. The best thing to do in this case is to delete the email and just log into the account in question, by visiting the appropriate website, and then checking your account status.                                                                                                                                                        
6. If you get an email saying you have won a contest that you didn’t enter, the chances are that this is a scam. No matter how inviting the prize may look avoid clicking the link and certainly don’t provide any of your personal details.                                                                                                                       
7. Emails from financial organisations such as; banks, PayPal, eBay etc. will address you by name and so watch out for emails addressed "Dear Valued Customer" as these are likely to be fraudulent.

Read More

Phishing FAQ's

What is Phishing?

Phishing is a type of online identity theft, which typically uses emails and fraudulent websites, in order to steal information such as credit card details, passwords, account details and other personal information. Phishing emails and websites often falsely claim to be an established legitimate enterprise in an attempt to get you to share your private information.

How does phishing work?

Phishing works by pretending to be from a legitimate enterprise, such as banks, or other websites where you may have cash or credit card details stored, with the key aim of acquiring your private information. Criminals can then use the information provided for many types of fraud, such as steal money from your account, open new accounts in your name or to obtain official documents using your identity.

The most common form of phishing is fraudulent emails, prompting the recipient to “confirm your password”, “verify your account” or “confirm your identity”. Such emails are linked to fraudulent websites that are designed to look like those of legitimate enterprises or links that, once clicked, will download a virus or spyware onto your computer without your knowledge.

Can a phishing scam contain official company logos?

The simple answer is YES! Phishing scams almost always try to mimic established legitimate companies, the scam relies on people being tricked into thinking they are actually being contacted by the company. It is relatively simple make a website look like that of a legitimate organisation by mimicking the HTML code or to copy company logos.

How can you protect yourself against identity theft?

There are a number of precautions you can take to avoid becoming a victim of a phishing scam, and here they are:

• Avoid clicking links in email messages
• Type website addresses directly into your browser, to ensure you know you are on a legitimate website
• Avoid entering your personal or financial information in pop-up windows
• Keep your computer software current with the latest security updates
• Never give out sensitive information
• If you are worried about an account, call the company or organisation directly to inquire about it

What should you do if you receive a phishing email?

If you receive an email that you believe to be a phishing email, the best practice is not to respond and to simply delete the email. Alternatively you could report it to the company the email is mimicking in order for them to warn their customers.

What should you do if you think you are a victim of a phishing scam?

There are a number of steps you should take if you believe you have fallen victim to a phishing scam, such as:

•  Changing your passwords and secure answers for any potentially compromised accounts should be done immediately
• You may want to contact your bank or financial adviser to alert them to the fact that your accounts may be compromised, this will allow you to put a fraud alert on your accounts
• Regularly monitor your emails and financial statements so that you can identify any false charges or suspicious activity as soon as it appears
• Run a full virus scan on your computers, to ensure you don’t have any viruses or spyware that could potentially steal your personal data

Do phishing attacks only happen through email?

While email is the most common form of phishing attack, this is not the only way phishing is carried out.  Another form of phishing attacks is malware, some malware can track how you use your computer and send valuable information to identity thieves. Phishing attacks can also occur through phone calls, texts and instant messages. It is vital that you remain cautious when asked to provide your credentials and other personal information.

Read More

What Does Mimecast Have to Offer?

Mimecast

We are proud to be a Mimecast partner and are taking this opportunity to tell you about the fantastic email security services we can offer our new and existing customers.

Mimecast offers three key services:

•             Email Security

•             Email Archiving

•             Email Continuity

Email Security

As the range of email threats has grown significantly over the years, systems for email security and encryption have become ever more complex. With users demanding ever higher levels of protection, along with expecting business enabling functionality, businesses are left spending significant amounts trying to secure email systems. Mimecast Email Security provides the most comprehensive, cloud-based email risk mitigation available in today’s market.

Mimecast Email Security protects against both inbound and outbound email-borne threats, including malware, spam, phishing, DHA & DDoS attacks, deliberate or accidental data leaks, outages and social engineering attacks.

Email Archiving

Email archiving is a critical requirement for every organisation, but it’s more than just email storage for record keeping and compliance. Mimecast Email Archiving cuts the cost and complexity of secure, accessible email archiving, giving users instant access to every email they’ve ever sent or received, while also giving you central control of email retention policies.

As much storage as you need, whenever you need it. No more email backups.

Mimecast’s cloud-based platform stores all your email, internal and external, in a highly secure and resilient archive, giving you as much space as you need. Data for all employees past and present is also retained, for your reference.  All this is charged by the number of users and offers a perpetual storage period, providing you with predictable storage costs. 

End User Benefits:

•             Bottomless mailboxes for end users

•             Personal email archive access from MS Outlook

•             'Drag and drop' between Outlook and Mimecast archive

•             Near real-time search

•             Familiar personal folder structures     

•             Personal email archive access through mobile devices.

Email Continuity

While email is now a critical from of business communication, its reliability does not always match its importance. Businesses can no longer afford email outage for any length of time, which is why Mimecast Email Continuity delivers always-on, seamless email availability through automatic service failover and failback in near real-time during an email outage. 

Mimecast Email Continuity is the only cloud based solution that steps in automatically to deliver email to end users during outages of your Microsoft email service, making it an essential part of your business continuity plan. It integrates seamlessly with Microsoft outlook, allowing you to continue using email safely and securely, whether the email outage is planned or not.

On top of giving users uninterrupted access to live email from Outlook during an outage, plus direct access to 58 days’ worth of archived email and up to 10 years when combined with Mimecast Email Archive. Also its flexible browser-based access through the Mimecast Personal Portal provides calendar information. All of this is managed from a single administration console, with no additional on premise hardware required. Therefore simplifying your network and reducing administration.

Unified Email Management (UEM)

Mimecast UEM simply amplifies the benefits of all three services mentioned above, by delivering them as a single, tightly integrated, cloud-based service. Thus, radically simplifying the complex world of email management, removing the need to deploy, integrate and manage multiple third party systems, leaving you with a high performance Exchange server to manage.

Mimecast UEM is offered in two packages; UEM Express and UEM Enterprise. UEM Express combines Mimecast’s Email Security and Email Continuity. While UEM Enterprise combines all three of the services mentioned above, in order to deliver maximum benefits to end users.

Mimecast UEM Enterprise

Mimecast’s UEM Enterprise is the only email management solution to offer fully unified email security, continuity and archiving services, building on the basis of the UEM Express service by adding powerful archiving to the combination.

As well as ensuring that both email availability and security are maintained during outages, UEM Enterprise also delivers tight integration between:

Security and continuity – ensuring that security and DLP policies are consistently enforced, even during outages.

Archiving and security – Providing context and help in the event of a security breach, while also being able to establish whether the data leak was accidental or malicious.

Continuity and archiving – ensuring that administrators and end-users enjoy uninterrupted access to the entire email archive, even on mobile devices (Android, Windows, iPhone and Blackberry), at all times even during an outage.

For more about Mimecast core services:

or to arrange a Mimecast live webinar, contact Andy Potts, our Business Development manager, by phone on 01723 587240 or by email at andy@practicalnetworks.co.uk

Read More