Following on from the news about the malware infection over the weekend, be VERY careful when receiving emails with attachments or containing links. There are several subtle ways the emails appear to be legitimate:
1. The email address can say it’s from Care Micro Systems, but when you read the full address it’s actually from a Gmail account or different domain name for example
Incorrect address:
Care Micro Systems Ltd <carem1cro@gmail.com>
Correct address:
Care Micro Systems Ltd <info@caremicro.co.uk>
2. Emails can also come through working on a few presumptions. Such as you have a PayPal account or that you bank with HSBC. They may even have information such as your last four digits of your account or your username. If you are in any doubt the email is legitimate, don’t click on the link within the email. Go directly to their website, login to your account and search for what you are looking for.
3. If you do think the email is legitimate, and you feel you need to click on the call to action link, hover over the link to see if it’s going to redirect you to the correctly spelt website address. For example
Incorrect link:
Click here to contact us
Correct link:
Click here to contact us
4. Emails might also come through your spam filter claiming that there’s an invoice attached from a business you haven’t heard of. If in doubt, search for the customer or ask colleagues if you are expecting an invoice from the business.
Further information:
Although the importance of anti-virus, firewall and anti-malware software cannot be stressed enough, this is only part of an overall IT security strategy. Keeping systems fully patched and up to date (not just the operating systems but applications as well), decommissioning unsupported systems (as they are no longer being patched to fix exploitable code) and user education also play a large role.
This is particularly relevant to older unsupported Microsoft operating systems as they have been out of maintenance patches for a while. However, at the weekend, Microsoft released a patch for Windows XP and Server 2003 to try and reduce the impact of the problem. Please also be aware that viruses and malware aren’t just developed for Microsoft operating systems so the above guidance applies to all your devices.
If you would like to speak to a technical consultant for further information, please contact us today:
