Due to COVID-19, SPAM, phishing, and website scams are on the rise – is your organization ready?

Google reports that its flagship email service, Gmail has received more than 18 million phishing attacks per day related to COVID-19. SPAM filtering service Nuspire has announced a 100%+ increase in quarantined emails in early 2020. Attackers frequently capitalize on current events and a sense of doom or urgency to add verisimilitude to their attempted breaches. We’ve outlined several examples below:

1. Impersonating authoritative organizations such as the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization to solicit fraudulent donations or to distribute malware.
2. Impersonating HR or Administrative departments in an attempt to phish employees working from home.
3. Impersonating state and local government organizations to solicit personal information or spread misinformation about public health orders.
4. Attempts to gather personal information or lure the user into interacting with malicious documents with regards to the government stimulus package.

Additionally, there has been a dramatic increase in the registration of domains related to the ongoing outbreak. Some of these may be legitimate – many, however, are associated with one or more of the examples listed above. We recommend approaching newly registered domains with caution.

User awareness is critical to our digital security – however, there are other steps we can take. LeafTech believes in a holistic approach to security, including a strong SPAM filter, Advanced Threat Protection (ATP), DNS analysis and hardening, robust endpoint protection and response software, hardening of any cloud services, and firewall configuration to block malicious websites.

Contact LeafTech Consulting today to review your security posture! Reach our support team by emailing support@leaftechit.com or calling 720.319.8324 x2.

Photo by Clint Patterson on Unsplash