Every Day Cybersecurity Habits
Cyber attacks aren't going anywhere unfortunately. In fact, the methods being used are becoming more and more advanced. A user's lack of knowledge or proper attentiveness has always been a major flaw to any cybersecurity plan. The best thing we can do as users is stay well informed and vigilant when working with emails and other digital media. Be extra careful of any emails that are requesting passwords or other sensitive information (especially if you did not start the exchange). Please take the time to go through the steps below to decrease your odds of an incident.
Review the sender's name
Mail clients will display a person's name to us instead of their email address to make it easier for us to recognize who we are communicating with. While convenient, this whole system relies on trusting the sender has entered legitimate information. Bad actors will look to use your familiarity with a contact so that you will drop you guard and be more susceptible to their scam.
Make sure the sender's name is spelled properly and formatted the same if you have communicated with the sender previously. For example, I always display my name with the second "c" in my last name capitalized. Seeing my name like "Darren McCarthy" would be correct. If you were to receive an email from "Darren Mccarthy" that should be a hint something may not be right with this email
Review the sender's email address
As mentioned above, the name displayed in your mail client is based on trusting
