Social Engineering – Recognizing the Difference Between Legitimate Websites and Phishing Attempts

What is a phishing scam?

Phishing scams are a form of social engineering, where an attacker will impersonate someone legitimate in order to gain your trust. By pretending to be someone else, they can trick you into giving up personal information or even having malware installed on your computer. It is important to recognize the signs of phishing attempt.

What is social engineering?

A social engineering attack occurs when an individual or an organization tries to gather information about people by using social tactics. Social engineers make use of different social situations and mediums such as phone calls, email messages and personal approaches in order to extract information from their targets while hiding what they are doing.
This type of attack is more advanced than a phishing scam because it takes advantage of human interactions instead of directing the victim through a fake website.

Phishing In contrast with social engineering, a phishing scam uses impersonation in order to get you to click on a link that will open up your computer for malware installation or let hackers into your private data.

What can you do to protect yourself ?

Phishing and social engineering scams are difficult to protect yourself from because they rely on human interactions. However, if you know what to look out for, it is much easier to spot social engineering attacks in the making.

• Be wary of emails that don’t add up or request sensitive information such as social security number or credit card details. The organizations that ask for personal information will not do so via email and will never directly ask for your password…
  
• Avoid opening suspicious links and watch out for misspellings in links…
  
• If you feel like something isn’t right, stop and think before clicking a link or accepting an attachment. It’s better to be safe than sorry!

Reach out to kiwiz consulting we are happy to discuss your IT needs.

For move detailed information
National Cyber Security Centre
https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/information/report-suspicious-emails
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing