Cybersecurity is the practice of protecting systems, networks, and programs from digital attacks.
Social engineering is a general term used to describe how bad actors manipulate individuals into giving them access to personal information.
Phishing is the most common form of social engineering for stealing an individual’s personal information like IDs or passwords, or for installing malware which can be used for various purposes including ransomware attacks.
Please read and review the following steps to avoid being a victim of phishing attempts:
Check the sender's email address to ensure it's legitimate.
Double-check the URL of a link before clicking on anything.
Call the company or person directly using a known phone number.
When in doubt, do not click on anything in a suspicious email.
Use the phish alert button to delete and report the email in one step.
Scammers do this Your response to keep safe
Makes it similar to an existing site or known's person's name Look closely at the URL or the email address
Promote gifts or loss of access If it’s too good to be true, it probably is. Delete the email.
Instill a sense of Urgency Check your level of alarm, if there's panic it's probably a scam
To make it easier for users to report potential phishing emails, we enabled a software button in all faculty and staff Gmail accounts. Please be aware that your Gmail may prompt you to ‘accept’ this feature before fully activating it.
Once activated, the phish alert button will look like an orange hook in Gmail and will appear across the top menu when you open an email.
When you receive an email you suspect may be malicious, press this button to report it. It will automatically delete the email from your inbox and also report the suspicious email to the Technology Office by automatically generating a support ticket. If the email was part of a phishing test launched by our office, you will get a notification that you correctly identified the phish.
If you use Outlook for email, please send in a ticket so our team can install the version for Outlook on your computer.