Is a CEO near you being targeted for Spear Phishing attacks

Spear Phishing email is the description given to highly targeted spam campaigns, typically targeting specific individuals or departments within a company. These are often the CEO or Finance Director.

Messages are directed to the target via email, social media, etc, because they often appear to have come from a trusted supplier, partner or even an internal communication. Because that's where the cyber criminal will have done their home work on you. To devise an attack vector that will look plausible to you the intended victim.

The aim of the Spear Phishing email campaign is to dupe someone with in an organisation into inadvertently giving access to the network, by downloading a pay load such as ransomware.

CEO Fraud

Criminal gangs are also actively defrauding many companies directly with fake invoices or requests for payment.

This form of fraud has seen companies lose thousands of pounds to cyber crime gangs specialising in what is known as CEO fraud.

The Problem for everybody is that the Dark Web is awash with personal data from multiple data breaches.

Recently the existence of the data leak known as Collection #1 was made public, collections #3-5 are now in circulation comprising some 3.5 billion user records.

The importance of this is, that because information is available about you on the Dark Web, usually as a result of a breach at an organisation that hold your personal data. The task of the cyber criminal is greatly simplified and the chances of you becoming a target are multiplied.

How do I find out if my personal data has been compromised? (Email exposure check pro)

Spear Phishing Emails are targeting key individuals within businesses

Breaches like those at Marriott, British Airways, LinkedIn and Equifax have created an extensive repository of Personal Data for potential Spear Phishing email scams and other Social Engineering based attacks.

Spear Phishing emails are a constant threat but it is worth noting that a tactic employed by Cybercriminals is to use peak periods such as Black Friday, Christmas & the New Year, to target busy CFO's with sophisticated Phishing attacks.

The attacks often using hijacked mail accounts and identities to carry out the scam.

Recent research has shown that 91% of data breaches are linked to Phishing attacks. Tamite Secure IT put in place strategies that include training and detection technologies that will protect your critical mail stream. We recommend you employ advanced email filtering with Phishing protection as well as Security Awareness Training.

Knowledge is your first line of defence.

Users today need to understand the proliferation, sophistication, and wide range of attacks possible through Security Awareness Training. Because it is only through continuous training and testing that you will take on a mindset that keeps your guard up when interacting with the web or email, across any device being used.