Hey everybody, Jeremy here Managing Director of The Human IT Company. As I record this it's actually the day after cybersecurity awareness month, but I really wanted to talk specifically about an evolving threat that's coming from bad guy central.
Managed service providers and IT companies like ours here in Vancouver are pretty good at blocking email that contains a link that takes you to a bad place. Either it doesn't get to you or it ends up in your junk mail folder. But what the bad guys are doing now is altering their tactics by sending you an email that doesn't have any links at all.
Here's an example of what those emails look like. I've redacted the phone number so that no one accidentally calls them, but you can see for yourself what they look like. Usually, it's the link itself that triggers the spam filter or the content filter and so by omitting it the bad guys are trying to bypass that, to get directly to your inbox. Instead you receive an email that says you've been invoiced, and that your credit card will be charged a few hundred dollars.
But the email tells you that if you want to get a refund simply phone them back. If you phone them back that's where they really start to turn the screws. They'll use any number of social engineering techniques to either get your credit card information, or they'll try to get you to download and run some software that they say will uninstall the product. Or maybe they'll even offer to do it for you. No matter which option you go with
It usually doesn't end up well for you unfortunately.
Naturally the best defense for this is education; knowing what fraudulent email looks like is the easiest way to defeat the evolving tactics and techniques used by the bad guys. Spam filters work great but aren't perfect. Spam filters combined with a well-educated team are the best possible defense against hackers and scammers.
So if you’d like to know more about getting some complementary cybersecurity training for your team, or if you'd like to learn more about keeping yourself safe, leave us a message in the comments, give us a call at 604-336-8133 or come visit us at www.HumanITCompany.ca and we'll get you set up. Why is the training free? Because This Is The Way IT Should Be Done. Thanks for watching and have a great day.
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