A common scam going around requires everyone to be on their toes. Here’s the situation… An e-mail comes in from the boss asking you to e-mail a copy of employee pay stubs, tax information and files with confidential data such as social security numbers in them. In another example, the boss asks for a transfer or ACH payment to a vendor or a different bank account. The problem: even though it has the boss’s e-mail address and name, and appears to come from the big guy…it is still a scam. To compound problems, a lot of bosses DO legitimately send these types of e-mails.
If you get a request relating to personal, confidential information or a request for banking transactions from someone in your organization, you must double-check that it really came from that person. In lots of cases, a quick text message is an easy confirmation. And even if it’s a legitimate request, never send confidential information like social security numbers (or attachments with this information inside of them) without taking precautions to password-protect and encrypt the message first. If it doesn’t feel right, it’s probably not right.
I'm Robert Patterson with Progressive Computing and I'll be back soon with another IT Security Tip.
