It’s Friday morning and after a pretty intense Thursday, just want to send out a little warning to folks. Yesterday we lost a great musician and “The Juice” is about to be loose. These are two pretty significant headlines. What does that mean? Well it means the scammers are going to be using this against people.
Be ready for phishing emails related to these two stories. Pretty much any time there’s a major event inboxes are flooded with stuff like this. This is pretty typical since social engineering is really about leveraging our emotions against us.
Now I have to admit, music hasn’t played a huge role in my life but it has many others so this hits home for many especially given the fact that it’s a suicide. With respect to OJ, I think most of us that are old like me remember the low-speed chase in LA and the ensuing legal battle, more than what he actually got locked up for. Either way these things relate to a number of us across different generations and that makes them great ammo.
I suggest that if you haven’t already, send some simulated phishing emails to your users related to these subjects. The idea is to inoculate them before they get the one with a malicious attachment. My company KnowBe4, has already been all over this today and already has templates made to deal with this sort of thing. If you’re a customer, use them.
Stay safe out there folks, and let those users know that this may be coming.
Erich Kron is the Security Awareness Advocate at KnowBe4, and has over 20 years’ experience in the medical, aerospace manufacturing and defense fields. He is the former security manager for the US Army 2nd Regional Cyber Center-Western Hemisphere.