When the People You Trust Phish You

To succeed in business, you need to develop trustworthy and long-lasting relationships. You need to trust multiple people to procure the right equipment, starting with your vendors and suppliers. Second, you need to ensure that your staff works in a trustworthy manner and does not compromise your business. Lastly, you need to build trust with your customers to sell your products or services. 

However, you need to be aware of scamsters who can disturb the trust between all the stakeholders. Cybercriminals are only worried about procuring your network access or data. Their determination can threaten your business. One of the common ways cybercriminals destroy your trust is via the phishing scam of Display Name Spoof.

Today, let’s understand more about display name spoofing so that you don’t end up being the cybercriminal’s next victim.

Common Phishing Example: Display Name Spoofing

Display name spoofing is a spear-phishing strategy where scamsters will target an employee with access to sensitive network information or resources. Then, the hacker sends them a fake email that seems to come from a trusted source such as an authority figure. Since the title and email address appear legitimate, subordinates can fall into the hacker’s trap and compromise sensitive company data.

Let’s understand how it works. Most business emails have an email signature. Hackers use this information to target lower-level employees. For instance, they will obtain the signature of the CEO and send a mail impersonating them. The unsuspecting employee will consider the demands in the mail as legitimate.

Here is an example of display name spoofing tactics.

Here, only the email ID is illegitimate. Also, some clients don’t even show a default email address as part of their signature. Hence, you can’t blame an employee for being misled by the spoofed email. 

How to Tackle Display Name Spoofing? 

You have different security measures for your business: CCTV cameras, security locks, the access control process for employee authorizations, etc. How should you change your business strategy while protecting your sensitive digital assets? 

You need a well-thought-out plan to protect your business’s digital assets. Be prepared to face phishing attempts and ensure that your employees are well-trained to handle any security breach. They need to handle any situation of phishing independently.

You can follow certain tips to make out if the message that you receive is valid:

  • Before your first response, thoroughly verify the sender and receiver email IDs.
  • Scan the mail for incorrect grammar or misspellings.
  • See if the message asks you to take urgent action.
  • Monitor if the email asks you to pass on your organization’s authorization credentials.

If you doubt that an email is illegitimate, you can always verify it. Verification is a simple process that just takes minutes. In this way, you eliminate display name spoofing from its roots. 

If you want to learn the strategies of identifying phishing tactics or train your employees to effectively tackle phishing attacks, contact expert professionals at MyTek, a Phoenix IT firm. 

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