With the passing of time, hackers are becoming more cunning in the way in which they execute their criminal activities. Hackers lurk the internet looking for loopholes in both personal and corporate networks with a hope of using these loopholes to gain a foothold into corporate networks. In our line of work as an Orange County managed IT services provider, we have discovered a growing trend of spear phishing attacks directed to new employees by hackers. In this article, we explain why this trend is worrying and how best you can protect your employees, and by extension, your firm against these attacks.

What Are Spear Phishing Attacks?

Spear phishing attacks are electronic or email communication scams that are directed to individuals by hackers. The goal of this attack is to dupe or trick the recipients to click on some link or take some action which would in effect expose them or the network they are on to the hacker.

Why attack the New Employees?

New employees are an easy target for hackers because of the following reasons:

• The new employees do not know most of the people in the organization – This makes the work of the hacker easy because the hacker can easily concoct a message and send it to the new employee’s email without the employee suspecting much.
• New employees reveal their job details online – We live in a world where people connect easily via social media. Working as an Orange County managed IT services provider, we have discovered that most new hires expose themselves to hackers by revealing too much of their personal information online. Hackers can use the information these new hires give online to launch an attack directed to your organization.
• New employees are always out to impress – A new employee would hurriedly respond to an email whose source looks like it is from someone important in the organization. This rushed decision can easily expose the organization’s IT network to some serious vulnerabilities.

So…

How Can You Protect Your IT Infrastructure from Spear Phishing Attacks?

You can protect your IT infrastructure by protecting your new employees from these attacks. This can be done by:

• Training employees on how to detect these scams
• Using a robust firewall which monitors inbound and outbound traffic
• Involve a cybersecurity expert who will offer continuing security awareness training

Parting Shot

Protecting your IT network should rank high on your priority list. To learn more on how to do these, get in touch with Advanced Networks. We are an expert Orange County Managed IT Services Provider that specializes in ensuring businesses such as yours protected online. Contact us now.