Three Warnings Signs of a Malicious Email Attack

Email is usually promoted as a favorite medium for iniating cyberattacks against organizations and individuals. Why? Because it’s easy to hide the true intent behind an email attack within its contents, whether they are embedded images in the message itself, or links to external sources. How can you be absolutely certain that the links in your email inbox are legitimate and secure?

You need to be as vigilant about this as you can be. You should always be looking for reasons not to click on links in your emails if possible; it’s better to lean on the side of caution than risk being vitimized from a malware infection or data breach. Below are three warning signs to look for in a potentially malicious email attack.

Spelling and Grammar Mistakes
The initial warning sign of a fraudulent email is that it’s littered with all sorts of spelling and grammar mistakes. Professional messages sent from established sources will probably have accurate grammar, but if it’s incoherent and difficult to understand, chances are that the message is risky at best, especially if it contains links. However, there are always exceptions to this rule. Phishing emails are often so discreet that it can be hard to identify them via this method. Thus, you’ll have to keep other information in mind before clicking on any links.

Links Leading to Uncertain Targets
There are times when you’ll receive an email and won’t be certain if it’s legitimate or fraudulent. In instances like this, it’s always best to approach the link cautiously by making sure that the link leads to where it claims to. You can accomplish this easily enough by merely hovering over the link with your mouse without clicking on it. You’ll see the linked URL right in a little bar at the bottom of your browser highlighting the link target. If it’s not something that it should be linking to, stay away from it!

Messages from Obscure Senders
Another significant red flag that can reveal the nature of a message is who the actual sender is. If it’s from someone you don’t recognize or someone who you don’t think should be reaching out to you, immediately reconsider clicking on any links or messages contained in it. Even if the sender is known to you, but the message is suspect, you can see if the email address matches anything that you have on record for that sender. If it doesn’t match, you know that you can’t trust whoever sent the message to you. In a worst-case circumstance, you could be looking at a phishing or whaling scam, in which case you need to notify your IT department ASAP so that proper measures can be taken.

The good news about suspect or fraudulent emails is that you can keep most of them out of your inbox with an enterprise-level spam filter. The bad news is that sometimes even this isn’t enough for more dangerous threats. The best security measure you can implement is still extreme caution. If you teach your workers how to effectively identify threats, they will be more likely to avoid them or, even better, report them to IT for proper analysis. To learn more about security tools and training, reach out to Macro Systems at 703-359-9211.