It’s Always Open Season for eMail Scammers

You have to give credit to email scammers – they are relentless in exploiting every opportunity. Some of their phishing emails are obvious scams, but others are cleverly worded enough to make you click the link and start entering valuable data. All it takes is one click to open a door into your company’s network. At WGTECH, we have two pieces of advice: when in doubt, call us; if you have already clicked, call us. We work with our clients to deploy the most advanced security protections, including robust antivirus solutions. But email continues to be a weak link in the security chain – any employee can click to follow up on a UPS shipping update, to find out why their PayPal account has been cancelled, or to upgrade their webmail. Those links often lead you to a webpage that downloads a script or infects your system with malicious code. Even if the link takes you to a legitimate web page, items or images on that page can be infected. How can you protect your business?

The first step is to defend: we can help you build layers of protection, including spam filters, antivirus software, web filtering, and advanced firewalls. We can also help you establish a solid data backup and management strategy to help you protect your data assets.

The second step is to educate: we often go to customers’ offices to conduct mini workshops on how to sniff out a malicious email and other security hygiene practices.

The third step is to call us when something goes awry. If you get an online pop-up screen that says your computer is infected, don’t download the software – call us and we’ll walk you through it. Don’t ever give out your computer password after being prompted by one of these pop-up windows – call us first. And don’t give out your credit card to get your data back. Plenty of solid businesses have fallen victim to this type of ransomware situation – don’t let it happen to you.

BlogStaffMay 11, 2016email security, ransomware, security