Spam Filters Won’t Stop Phishing

SPAM filters are great, and you should definitely be using them. However.. phishing isn’t the same threat, therefore SPAM solutions don’t work. Here are a few ways phishing scams get through:

1. Phishing emails are often crafted to impersonate your email domain name or even someone you know.
2. The email content is designed such that a SPAM filter doesn’t recognize the message as fake. A skilled phisher will test their messages against commercial SPAM filters so they are more likely to get to you.
3. A spammer is attacking millions of people hoping just a few will respond, but a phisher can be a one-to-few or one-to-one effort. If you respond to a phishing email, it’s very likely the phisher will answer in the hopes of solidifying the deception.

Remember this fact: A user is easy to exploit, compared to most of the sophisticated filtering algorithms and appliances designed to stop intrusion.

What can you do?

1. Educate your staff on the dangers of phishing. Keystone is happy to provide you with resources or conduct a training to help you with this education.
2. Make sure your email solution is not old and ineffective – well at least relative to modern phishing technology. You will get better protection with a newer technology like Microsoft Office 365 vs. an in-house server or even some other commercial email solutions.  This is because Microsoft Office 365 utilizes the more advanced mechanisms to protect against SPAM and phishing, and it’s updated and managed by a team of Microsoft engineers and skilled local technology resources – like Keystone. Solutions like Office 365 are the future of email.  Yes changing over can be painful but it’s a one-time discomfort and the features well outweigh the cost of conversion.

Phishing is big business – it’s estimated the cost of phishing will be $3 trillion by 2020. If you’re like me, that number is hard to imagine, but just realize this is a serious effort to steal your information and ultimately your money.

You don’t have to go it alone in the dangerous world of Internet and email – contact Keystone for more information.