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Keep your business safe - How to recognise phishing scams

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Whilst you can do everything feasible to avoid phishing scams, it’s not always possible to keep your business safe. After all, no one can account for human error 100% of the time. This means that you need to prepare your business to deal with these scams. Your staff must know how to recognise them and once identified, you can notify your insurance adviser as well as government resources such as the ACCC and help keep other businesses cyber-safe.

Tell-tale signs of phishing scams

A frequent tactic involves emails that claim to be from a company your business regularly deals with, asking you to verify your company’s details. Unsuspecting employees are easily duped into thinking that it’s a genuine request, which is why these phishing scams are so successful.

So it takes no stretch of the imagination to realise that preparing your business to deal with social engineering fraud should be an important part of employee training. Here are a few of the signs that help employees recognise scam emails.

Incorrect domain names

Staff should check that the sender’s email address matches the name of the company. For example, if the email is apparently from Microsoft, then the sender’s email should include Microsoft as part of the sender’s address. It’s not always that easy, however, because phishing scams often use subtle misspellings in the domain name that can escape a cursory examination.

Another issue is that legitimate companies often use a variety of email variations of their domain names, relating to different departments. For example, a web design company might have different emails that include the words ‘support’, ‘hosting’ or ‘accounts’ to ensure that your response arrives at the correct department.

To keep your business cyber-safe, compare the sender’s email with previous emails received from that company. You can also call them using a number not taken from the email and confirm that the email is genuine.

Sense of urgency

Another aspect of phishing emails is that they promote a sense of urgency. They want you to click on or download an attachment immediately or your business will be penalised. This is a common trick used in phishing scams to make you panic and act before you check whether the email is genuine or not.

Poor spelling and grammar

Another tell-tale sign of social engineering fraud is poor spelling and grammar. With these emails being sent from all around the world, many contain spelling and grammatical errors. Some scammers use translation software to try and overcome this problem but mistakes are still made and can be picked up by employees with good literary skills.

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Non-personalised emails

Emails that are not personalised and are sent with a generic greeting are often from scammers. In today’s world, any B2B company can identify the correct person to contact in another company. So always consider these emails suspicious until proven otherwise.

New senders

If you’ve received an email from a new address or an address that hasn’t been used for a long time it’s worth further investigation. It could be a scam, so to keep your business safe, always make the necessary checks.

Whilst identifying phishing scams helps keep your business cyber-safe, these scammers are successful because they are very clever. Some scams inevitably slip through the net which is when cyber insurance becomes so important. With the right type of cyber insurance, you can manage your liability and protect your business even if the worst happens.

To explore the benefits of cyber insurance for your business, talk to an insurance specialist today and find your local Insurance Advisernet adviser.

General Advice Warning: This advice is general and does not take into account your objectives, financial situation or needs. You should consider whether the advice is appropriate for you and your personal circumstances. Before you make any decision about whether to acquire a certain product, you should obtain and read the relevant product disclosure statement.

All information above has been provided by the author.

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This article originally appeared on Insurance Advisernet News and has been published here with permission.