FireEye, a Milpitas based publicly listed Cyber Security company has discovered in its latest study that one in 100 emails are malicious. That means they are being crafted to trick people to surrender their personal details or download malware on to the recipient computers. And the results were declared only after analyzing half a billion emails sent in the first half of this year.
Researchers from the Californian security firm suggest that less than a 3rd of emails sent are considered clean i.e they pass through the spam filters to be delivered straight to the inbox.
After analyzing emails sent in the previous 6 months, FireEye has come to a conclusion that one in every 113 emails had malicious intent and that doesn’t include spam emails.
According to the latest FireEye report messages containing links and attachments that could infect the recipient’s computer with malware are usually sent on Mondays and Wednesdays; whereas impersonation emails are sent on Fridays.
The survey also reveals that scammers are finding innovative ways to slip through email security systems. They are doing so by launching spoofing or imitation attacks where emails are crafted in such a way that they mimic a person or a company which the recipient knows.
So, how can you stop getting such tricky emails
Well, the first thing you can do is to set your spam filters to exclusive which allows messages from known senders appear in your inbox.
Train your spam filter in such a way that your cal selects suspicious messages and ask your messaging filter to mark it as spam.
Always ensure that the telephone number or the email addresses you get are from known persons.
Do not react to emails which say to act with urgency- usually those which say that you won a prize or are eligible for a special customer discount.
Never ever click on email attachments unless you are certain about the sender.
Install anti-malware solutions from companies such as Norton, Sophos, and McAfee.
