Phishing Scams Lure Employees

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18-May-2005

A new survey demonstrates how easy it is for employees to fall foul to phishing scams.

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The Phishing Trends Survey conducted by WebSense has demonstrated the ease to which scammers can fool their prey. The survey revealed that employees have fallen for phishing scams in nearly half of of the businesses surveyed.

More alarmingly perhaps, is the fact that the majority of businesses are not protected from phishing scams.

33% of employees told the survey that they had heard of phishing, 4% of employees stated that they had actually fallen for a scam, and 82% of IT network administrators revealed that company employees had received scams through emails or instant messaging systems.

The survey focused on the difficulty with which many people have in deciding whether a phishing site is legitimate or fraudulent.

Dan Hubbard, director of security and technology at WebSense described the problem. "Phishers are becoming more sophisticated in their deception techniques to lure employees to spoofed websites, as most employees cannot determine which is a valid site and which is a fake."

"It only takes one employee to click on a phishing site and accidentally give out confidential corporate data, customer records, network passwords, or trade secrets, to jepardise an entire organisation's intellectual property."

MillerSmiles News

18/05/05

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