It’s Fall and for a lot of us, that means one thing: football season has begun! Many people love sitting in front of the TV on Sunday to watch their favorite team battle it out on the gridiron. But this season we’re asking that while you’re watching the game, you take a second to think about how it compares to a strong Cybersecurity strategy.
Have you ever heard the saying, “The best offense is a good defense?” As unlikely as it may seem, this can apply to both football and Cybersecurity. In football, you need a strong defense to keep the other team out of your end zone. For Cybersecurity, you need a strong defense to keep cyber criminals out of your personal information.
The “play action” strategy that football players use during games (where the quarterback pretends to hand off the ball to a running back only to pull the ball away at the last second and throw it) is similar to the cybercriminal strategy of phishing. Phishing is when a criminal uses a fake looking email to trick their victim into opening up an attachment or clicking a link that leads them to malware.
Just like how you can defend in football, there are things you can look for in a suspicious email to figure out whether it’s real or not.
The SLAM Method:
- Sender: Check that the address the email is coming from is correct and doesn’t have any spelling errors.
- Links: Hover over any links present in the email to see where they are taking you. If what shows up doesn’t match with the name in the link or if it looks at all suspicious, do not click on it.
- Attachments: Never open attachments from unknown emails, it could contain dangerous malware that can infect your device.
- Message: Check the message of the email for any spelling/grammar errors or an uncommon sense of urgency.
