Phishing Prevention Campaign at SCOE

07/22/2019 -

In August, SCOE’s IT department will be launching a campaign to educate employees about how best to avoid phishing. Phishing is when scammers send emails that appear to be from reputable sources, or even someone you know, but contain links or files that can cause harm to your computer or be used to obtain personal information.

Beginning in August, IT will work with a third-party company to send pretend phishing emails with suspicious links to websites or Google Drive documents as well as attachments. Should you click on one of these links, your computer will not be harmed, but the information will be sent to IT so that they can follow up and provide training or assistance.

The goal of this campaign is to help all SCOE employees become aware of best practices with their email, including checking the source of the person sending the message and the URL included in any links before clicking on them.

Following are a few tips from IT on how best to avoid phishing:

• Unsolicited emails: Be cautious of emails claiming to be from official organizations
• Verify the sender's address: Check to see if the sender email address matches the sender name or the reply-to email address
• Avoid emails with improper spelling and grammar
• Beware of suspicious links:
• Do not click on a suspicious link
• Verify URLs by hovering over the link and verifying
• Verify the spelling of urls that you often see
• Email Tone: If the email claims to be from a familiar person or organization, be wary if the tone seems inconsistent or unfamiliar.