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How to spot phishing emails and avoid malware infections

Securityemail, malware, phishingOphtek, LLC

Jul 2015

Do you know how to spot a phishing email? Phishing emails are not only a nuisance, but can also lead to theft. Our guide will show you how to spot them.

The term “phishing” is likened to the word fishing, which sounds almost the same and is used with the same notion to reel in some information such as a username/password or to hook you into taking some action via an unsolicited email. The aim of a phishing email is to “phish” a user by having them fall for the bait without initially realizing it.

Convincing phishing emails work well for the originator without raising too much suspicion to the end user. So how does one avoid this? First, let’s understand the damage a phishing email can generate before we delve into how to spot one.

What harm can phishing emails cause?

There are two major risks that can result from opening up links or attachments from phishing emails.

Many email authors aim to trick users into believing that they’ve been contacted by a legitimate company that may prompt them to visit a link which can lead to a fake website. This site may be a copy-cat site of a legitimate one, for instance a banking site, complete with a login screen. The spoof site then captures and records login credentials which can be used again by the originator of the dummy site.
The email itself may pretend to pose as the legitimate company, such as a bank, prompting their targets to take action through their link. Usual email wording triggers the user to prompt some action such as “your account is suspended”, “update your information”, or even that an account has had “unauthorized access”. Anything which triggers panic or confusion is enough to get a user to follow through the phishing email’s instruction.

Such scams can lead users to give away their credentials, passwords, and private information, which can be used to steal their identity and money.

Many phishing emails also attempt to infect systems with malware. This is a common entry point for a large majority of infections at companies leading to infecting one’s computer system and network with nasty malware. The worst case scenario includes the malware holding a user’s data hostage in exchange for a ransom.

How to spot phishing scams

Below are usual signs of phishing email to watch out for.

Unrecognized sender. This is usually a big giveaway. If you don’t recognize the sender, treat it with suspicion. Even if the recipient appears with the same domain, always question this as clever phishing attacks can use the same company domain to trick users.
Unexpected emails. Unless you’re expecting an email from a company i.e. a delivery shipment notification, or a lottery win, treat this with suspicion. If unsure about a delivery shipment, contact the official company – acquiring their contact details through their official website.
Prompts to open up attachments. Avoid clicking any links or opening attachments.
Odd looking website addresses. Another clue to phishing emails are links in the email having suspicious website addresses, which can redirect you to a dodgy website.
Odd looking or out of place emails. If you’re able to look at the sender’s details, see what email address it displays. Most of the time their email domains will not match the company they claim to be from. For instance, an email claiming to be from your bank could have @yahoo.com domain. This is an obvious giveaway!
Impersonating institutions and companies. As mentioned earlier, be suspicious of so-called emails posing to be Banks, the IRS, Social Security Office and so forth. They rarely contact users through email. If in doubt, contact them directly and not through any telephone numbers given in the message.
Poorly written English and grammar. Many phishing emails contain poorly structured sentences and grammatical mistakes which sound like they’ve been written by a ten year old or a non-native English speaker.

If ever you’re in doubt, don’t hesitate to notify your IT administrator who can help to block as many phishing emails as possible. Even if some manage to filter through, which does happen, put this guide into practice.

For more ways to secure your business systems and networks, contact your local IT professionals.

Check if Your Email has Been Stolen

Office IT, Office Network, Securityemail, hacked, security, stolenOphtek, LLC

Sep 2014

With corporate data theft happening frequently, your email may have been stolen without you even knowing. Here’s how to check if your email has been stolen.

What Exactly is at Risk?

The simple answer is data. The power behind stealing data from a company means that your information can get into the wrong hands for malicious use. One prime example is Adobe, who had a large number of their users’ accounts exposed to the public domain. The interesting thing was that these same accounts were being targeted time and time again with the same user credentials, which puts their other accounts at risk. Other sites that have been compromised are mail.ru, Bitcoin Security Forum, Gmail dump accounts, Yahoo accounts, Sony, Tesco and many more.

Compromised information can include your email address, usernames, credit card details and password hints. People often use the same information on other websites as they would have done on their compromised email account making them, yet again, another easy target.

How to Check if You’ve Been Infiltrated

As much as we take precautions with our passwords, secret questions and the like, one needs to check periodically that their details have not already been accessed by unsolicited activity.

We suggest you check out this free public service, developed by Microsoft professional Troy Hunt, to check if your email or username has been compromised:

https://haveibeenpwned.com

If your email has been compromised, you will be advised on this site that it has been “pwned”. Being “pwned” is slang for having your email or other personal information stolen. You can also set up notifications in the event of being “pwned” in the future.

What if I have been “pwned”?

We suggest changing your password ASAP. The best practice is to use different passwords on different accounts. This is especially important for your primary email account, banking, shopping, and whatever else you would consider critical if someone were to steal. If keeping track of your various passwords is a challenge, there are free and secure password managers out there to help.

You can find a good FAQ and a list of other compromised networks as well.

For more tips on securing your privacy and office network, contact your local IT professionals.

Google Apps GMail vs. Your Webhost Email

Servicesemail, gmail, webhostingOphtek, LLC

Mar 2014

Google didn’t get to where it is now if it offered only a search engine. GMail, a member of the GApps family, is perhaps the crown jewel of all the services that Google has to offer. So what makes Google’s email service more appealing than its competitors? Why should a business move its email system to GMail instead of relying on services offered by the hosting company which already maintains its website? Below are some of the reasons why we think GMail is such an appealing service:

Spam filter—Unwanted emails are perhaps the reasons why many of us dread checking our emails each morning. Google has put a lot of effort into developing an extremely good spam filtering system that will send most (if not all) of the unwanted ad/scam/phishing content into the junk bin. From time to time, one of these dubious emails will sneak past the spam filter, but at least you can instantly notice the bad egg if its among 20 or so legitimate emails you have in your box.
Security—The first step to keeping your digital information safe is to create a good password for your account. After you’ve done that, it’s up to Google to handle and store this information in a safe vault (not literally of course). Google enforces secure transmission of your personal messages by encrypting them via the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol.
Automatic sorting—This GMail feature was only recently added, but we have to admit it’s pretty awesome. If you’re a heavy social media user, chances are your inbox is flooded with notifications from Twitter, Facebook and whatever else you’re into. GMail sorts out the different types of emails into three tabs: A ‘Primary’ tab, which receives all your important emails, a ‘Social’ tab to store all your social media/networking content, and a ‘Promotion’ tab that contains some of the less spammy ads (deals from Amazon and such).
Speed and uptime—If you’ve been using the internet every day for the last ten years or so, can you recall the number of times Google.com was down? Maybe once or twice? If the servers were ever down, we can’t recall it happening. For that exact reason, we can say we’re confident in how Google handles its datacenters so users can have access to all the services it offers 99.99% of the time. Moreover, Google has invested heavily in its infrastructure to ensure that most of us can access things like GMail in a timely manner. By timely, we mean broadband users can essentially pull up anything from their inbox in a blink of an eye.
Capacity—There once was a time when most email services offered just a few MB of storage, but that ancient tradition has since been squashed by GMail’s 15GB of free space. Most emails are just a few hundred KB in size, so just imagine how many emails you can save if you have 15GB. You also have the option of sending emails with a 25MB attachment, and if you signed up for Drive (Google’s cloud storage solution) you can ‘attach’ a 10GB file. The 10GB file won’t be directly sent to your recipient (imagine losing 2/3 of the inbox storage in just one email!) as the file is actually stored in Drive as a shared file.
Accessing Google goodies from GMail dash—Lastly, if you’re a Google fanatic and use services like YouTube and Hangout, these services are readily available right from the dashboard. Thus, there’s not need to manually type in the individual service URLs to get to these pages. What Google basically did was bookmarked most of the services it offers into the GMail dash so you don’t have to do it through your browser.

For small businesses (and even large ones), GMail is an indispensable tool. One GMail account gives you access to a slew of other Google-derived applications. Services such as Calendar, Hangout, Docs and Sites all sync with one account. That means, you can easily access any of the documents or services you started via GApps under one handle. The added benefit of being able to integrate personal or business domains (i.e. Janesflowershop.com) into the GMail system will greatly improve your workflow and information management. All the pros that we’ve listed above are either not offered via webhosting emails or are just too clunky to work. For help moving your email to GApps, contact your local IT professional.

Simplifying Small Business IT With Google Apps

Office IT, Servicesbusiness, calendar, cms, crm, email, gmail, google apps, itOphtek, LLC

Mar 2014

Access your documents from anywhere.

Just because you have a ‘website’ it doesn’t mean you or your organization is ready to start dealing with internet matters. Depending on where you’re going with your business, you have to decide which tools will suit your needs most. There are many supposed ‘all-in-one’ packages out there, but no one specific product will likely meet or even come close to fulfilling your demands.

That said, if you’re searching for a cloud suite to conduct and collaborate on ‘general’ internet matters, Google Apps for Business is a wonderful tool. Unlike niche-specific tools like customer relationship management (CRM) and content management systems (CMS), GApps provide you with most of the tools you would need to complete and collaborate on various tasks.

The Must-Have Emailing System

GMail from Google.

Let’s start with email. When it comes to brand building and recognition, you should have your own ‘domain’, which (in this instance) is something like www.mybusiness.com. Along with the domain name, you’ll also likely want to send out emails with a @mybusiness.com address. The hosting service you’ve chosen may provide you with an email system, but trust us when we say that these systems are simply just not as robust as the one built by Google. If you’re using a @gmail email address, you’re using one of the products GApps offer. From spam filtering to on-point subject searches, the Google-based emailing system is as powerful as you can get without getting your hands dirty. Once you’ve signed up for the GApps service, you’ll be able to integrate your business domain into Gmail and send out emails from the Google-built system.

Browser-based productivity apps that you can share and edit in real-time.

Collaboration In Real-Time

For creating documents, there are GApps products like Docs, Sheets and Slides for you to use—these are the cloud equivalent to Microsoft’s Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Since the GApps document apps are based in the cloud, all your work will be saved onto Google’s server so you can access them whenever and wherever you want. The documents also have built in ‘sharing’ features so that you and/or you employees can share and collaborate with each other without needing to constantly email drafts back-and-forth. Moreover, authorized users of any shared documents will be able to monitor and edit (if given permission) them in real-time.

Cross-platform Calendar app allows your employees to sync all their activities with each other.

Streamlining and keeping all your employees and partners up-to-date is also covered via Calendar. Despite all the technological advancements we’ve experienced in the last decade or so, a calendar is still exactly just that. Unlike the paper pocket reminder you have stashed away in your desk drawer, cloud-based calendar programs provide much more flexibility. Calendar from GApps gives you the ability to sync all your planned activities with your employees. This is especially beneficial if you’re all on time crunches and in need of a tool that will display when exactly everyone will be available.

Heavy In Features But Lighter Than A Cloud

Of course these cloud services will also require some sort of cloud storage, so Google is offering 30GB per user at a price of $5 per month. Should a person need more than 30GB, the administrator of the account can add 20GB to Drive for $4. Your information is automatically encrypted with Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) security technology, so the burden of having to build virtual private networks from the ground up is negated. Google guarantees that their servers will be up 24x7x365, which means you won’t have to ever worry about not being able to access your data—provided you have an internet connection.

We can’t forget to mention that GApps is a cross-platform service, meaning you can access/create documents and generate new information on virtually any devices. Many businesses have adopted the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) model, and chances are your employees have more than just iPhones in their pockets. GApps is accessible on Android, iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Phone and any phone or mobile device that supports a modern browser. Keep in mind that a modern browser is basically one that’s built for a smartphone, so a flip-phone from 10 years ago will likely not support GApps.

Well Done or Medium Rare?

GApps for Business isn’t, as we already mentioned, a tool that will provide you with everything you need to run your business from a workstation. Moreover, since there are so many ‘separate’ tools available, you need to decide which apps will offer the most return on your time spent using them. The GApps ‘system’ itself is like a raw piece of prime cut steak, and you get to decide how you want to have it done. Essentially, the only con when it comes to cooking a delicious GApps system is the time spent to figure out what you’re in the mood for, and for some this part of the thought process is the ‘make-it’ or ‘break-it’ portion.

A lot of work has to go into information management and GApps simplifies a lot of these areas. The apps themselves are simple enough to use, but with choices come confusion. How will you put all of it together? That’s why we’re here, send us an email or give us a call, we’ll be more than happy to guide you through the GApps process.

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