Phishing attempts to fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as passwords, personal information, military operations and financial details by masquerading in an e-mail as a trustworthy person or business. Phishing is normally used for the purpose of identity theft.
Spear phishing will often use the victim’s name, organization, spoof who the e-mail is from, and even relevant jargon to further make them think the e-mail is legitimate. Spear phishing on government systems is usually an attempt to gather information and intelligence. Spear phishers usually will attempt to make you open an attachment or Web link that will load malicious logic onto your computer.
Security tips mentioned in the article include checking the digital signature, double-checking Web site addresses by manually reentering the url, do not enable macros, disabling the e-mail preview pane or disabling HTML on the preview pane, and finally call the sender to verify that the e-mail did, in fact, come from them.
Read all the security tips offered here.
