How do you prepare yourself from a cyber-attack on your personal information? Something you check daily may be the number one threat. The inbox for your personal or work email is often where the number one threat to harmful content and click bait occurs. Spoofed and fake emails pose the greatest risk to the average person.

Often these appear in the form of email addresses that look similar, but are slightly off, such as

john.doe@fidelisim.net (.net instead of .com)
john.doe@fidelism.com (missing the ‘i’)
john.doe@fidelis-im.com (adding the hyphen ‘-‘)

While misspellings will often bounce back from your inbox, these accounts are tied to an actual person who set them up, making it more difficult to detect. Since there is a real person on the other end, they will often request something such as an account balance, following up with a transfer proposition to fix the issue. Excuses are also made to justify why the financial advisor is not available for a quick phone call to personally verify the transfer, these vary from a death in the family to a meeting holding them up.

To decipher which email will be most effective when sending a look alike request, these thieves will have previously have hacked into the inbox to see which recipients are of credibility. They are also able to mimic the tone of voice and casual conversation from the original respondent to not be discovered. These also start in the form of phishing emails, people sending emails to get a reaction or a response with a fake email.

These 3 tips can help keep you safe:
1. Stay away from unreliable sources and sites
2. Make sure your networks are secure
3. If unsure about an email, double check. Don’t hesitate to make a quick phone call to verify.

From our end, there are multiple steps that can be taken to ensure your security. Staff can be trained to look at headers and recipients/senders before reading the content. This allows immediate red flags to be seen, before clicking on links or reading further content occur. Also, requiring verbal consents of content transferring can be a safety precaution to protect the masses. This process will ensure all forms, signatures, and checks are accounted for before the actual transfer takes place. Additionally, by FIDELIS iM keeping a record of all client emails, we can crosscheck the emails on your account with the emails we receive, to ensure safety of your funds.

At FIDELIS iM, we want to use all precautions to guarantee your safety. We strive to take all measures to confirm that your email is truly you, and that your funds are transferred to the intended accounts. Although cybersecurity exposes people to threats daily, our attention to detail will keep you safe and secure.