IT services firms in West Palm Beach help businesses avoid being undermined by phishing scams. Phishing scams are ubiquitous and ultimately end up stealing billions from businesses annually. As a matter of fact, cybercrime, in general, is a multi-trillion dollar industry which only grows as technology does.
What Phishing Scams Are Out There?
The goal of phishing is to acquire information that can be used to access financial accounts and siphon funds from them. As a matter of fact, the goal may not even have anything to do with direct theft but could have something to do with corporate espionage. Following, three common means will be briefly explored:
- Email Spoofing
- Website Spoofing
- Social Engineering Hacks
IT services companies in West Palm Beach advise businesses to watch out for suspicious emails. Essentially, these will have the name of someone from your company but altered slightly to slip past software filters. For example, if the CEO were Michael Johnson, and his normal email were JohnsonM@YourCompany.com, the spoofed email might look like JonsonM@YorCompany.com.
See the subtlety? If your eyes just scanned over the "spoofed" address, you would think it was legitimate. There are other factors to watch for beyond the address to help avoid being taken in. When was the email sent? Are there abject grammatical errors? Is the email asking or demanding something be done immediately? These are all signs of a spoofed email.
A website spoof is when someone sends an email with a link to a site like Facebook, only for it to develop that the site you see, and subsequently input personal information into, is a sham. Think of it like a false storefront.
Basically, to appear legitimate, hackers will design the front face of a website which looks exactly like the main web address they're spoofing. You'll get a link asking you to update your security information, and then as soon as you give them your info, they use it to steal from you.
Social engineering hacks are pernicious and sneaky. Here's a video of a woman using a baby's cries in the background to trick a low-level employee at a cellphone company. Basically, human psychology is used as a means of phishing data.
Keeping Your Business Protected
Nexxen Technologies, Inc. is one of the leading IT services companies in West Palm Beach that can help train your team to avoid social engineering hacks, website spoofing, and email spoofing. We can also provide you with the latest technology solutions in terms of security. Contact us now for more information.