Last week Sendmail customer EMC warned businesses that Friday sees more phishing attacks than any other day of the week.
It seems hackers and scammers have their own twisted version of ‘TGIF’.
While it may not be especially surprising, EMC’s warning reminds us just how cognizant cybercriminals are of end user behavior, and how good they are at capitalizing on it.
After all, when is someone at work most likely to open up an email designed to dupe them out of passwords, financial and other info? When they’re whiling away those last few hours before the weekend. When work is either completed or pushed back in favor of sharing videos, images and memes with friends.
Fridays, phishers know, is when employees are “less on guard” and “more likely to check out a link someone emails to them,” says EMC’s Jason Ward. I imagine this is especially true of malicious links sent from hacked accounts that recipients recognize as trusted contacts.
In addition to making sure your employees are on their guard, we recommend checking out our new Sentrion URL Filtering application, (PDF file) which scans email messages for embedded URLs pointing to malicious sites. The app complements existing anti-spam and anti-virus technologies to combat the blended threats, which use email and a combination of viruses, worms, Trojan horses, malicious code and social engineering with server and Internet vulnerabilities to create rapid and widespread damage.
In addition to classifying links by site content or threat type (i.e., offensive, malware, phishing, etc.), URL Filtering provides configurable actions on messages, such as stripping attachments containing links to known malware distribution sites or creating compliance events if links to an unauthorized site are detected.
So be it Monday, Wednesday, or Phish Friday, your business and your employees can be protected.