Tip of the Week: Is Spam Ruining Your Email?

You don’t need us to tell you that it’s extremely dangerous to hand out information to just anyone that contacts your business. This is important to keep in mind, especially considering how the majority of threats can be sent via email. You’ll likely encounter situations where you need to consider whether or not to click on attachments, as you could potentially put your business at risk.

It helps to know why you need to be on the lookout, of course. Spam makes for a great medium to move threats such as ransomware, viruses, and other major problems for your business. Spam is an effective way to spread threats due to how easy it is to send countless messages to all sorts of users. This increases the likelihood of any number of users downloading the attachment, along with all of its malevolent contents.

Ransomware is most at home on business workstations that have downloaded infected attachments. For example, you might receive a message from someone who wants to send your business a resume--perhaps a “prospective employee.” If your HR department doesn’t know what signs to look for, they could unwittingly download the attachment and infect their systems with ransomware.

To make matters worse, a spam filter might not even be able to flag these phishing messages as dangerous since they are designed specifically to not be detected. You should keep an eye out for messages that claim to be receipts, shipping information, resumes/CVs, or other important information that you would normally keep an eye out for. Hackers know that you need this information, so they can take advantage of it to pull a fast one on you.

The best way to keep your business from suffering due to spam and phishing attacks is to both educate your employees and implement solutions designed to prevent spam from hitting the inbox. For the first, you can hold seminars on how to increase awareness of online threats. You should be teaching your employees not to open attachments from unknown senders. They should only do so after it has been deemed safe enough.

For spam and phishing protection, Directive can provide the requisite support. We can help you integrate an enterprise-level spam blocker and content filter to keep all but the most dangerous messages from entering your network in the first place. To learn more, reach out to us at 607.433.2200.