Protect yourself against Cyber Security scams

Last week eLamb was a recipient of a Cyber Security scam, fortunately for us our team have completed our eLearning Cyber Security course.

This month every member of our team received an usual email from Mark Wilson, our Managing
Director.

The email was addressed to the team member by name and was very short.

“I need you to get a purchase done for me today. Let me know if you are available.”

Fortunately, Gmail identified this email as suspicious.

It turns out this is a very simple yet increasingly common scam. If the email was replied to,  then
the scammer would know the employee has fallen for the trap and would reply with instructions to
purchase a gift card for a popular online service such as Amazon, iTunes, Microsoft Store, etc.

The scammer promises the employee will be reimbursed from the company accounts once they
receive the redeemable gift card code.

This code will then be redeemed online immediately by the scammer and the employee will be left out of pocket.

Anyone who has an email address will receive hundreds of scam emails a month but most are
blocked or filtered by our email providers.

The most concerning part of this scam is that this scammer knew that the team member’s worked for Mark Wilson so must had done some research into eLamb. Possibly on presumably on LinkedIn and then targeted the team member’s directly.

This example of cyber security breach is known as Spear Phishing. Normal phishing scams contacts thousands of people at a time to fraudulently try and get their logins, passwords or bank details. Spear Phishing is when a single person is targeted at a time.

If you would like to learn more about staying safe online and in your organisation, we provide an Off The Shelf Cyber Security course.

Please feel free to contact us if you would like a demonstration of our eLearning cyber security course.