Both small and medium-sized businesses tend to rely heavily on credit cards when dealing with certain suppliers and vendors, as a result credit card phishing scams tend to be a major risk factor. Sometimes anti spam software can be insufficient in providing overall protection due to the abundance of scams found on the internet and in emails. Below are some tips that can help prevent you and your company from becoming a victim.
1) Understanding the Credit Card Phishing Scam
One of the most vital ways to avoid credit card phishing scams is to first understand the scam so you can indicate when something may seem off with an email. A phishing scam is essentially a criminal organization that attempts to “spoof” your credit card company emails with ones that urge you to click a link or attachment in response to an urgent matter.
These emails often look legitimate, sometimes even with a person’s name, a seemingly correct email domain and a formal business letter addressing the issue. These emails often state that you need to confirm your credit card details, sign into your online account to prevent fraud that is taking place or that your account is overdue and you need to make an online payment immediately.
As soon as you click on the link or attachment, you are essentially downloading a virus, spyware or malware that the criminals can then use to access the real information they are seeking; banking and credit card information of the company or your clients.
2) Education & Training
If your company uses a number of credit cards or has company credit cards for your accounts payable employees, immediate training and education is needed to avoid these scam.
Within these emails, it is the smallest of details that sometimes gives the scam away. From improper grammar to an increased sense of urgency to take action now, they can be discovered if your employees are aware of these issues. Training staff to never click links in these emails should be the first step. Instead, every time employees should manually type in the credit card login and address to check accounts and make payments. Even the person’s provided email should be manually entered, often they are simply spoofed titles over-riding an underlying obviously fake sender.
3) Payment Policies
Having multiple verifications on any payments made via these credit cards can also interrupt these phishing scams. If a two-employee authorization is needed, often one of the two will realize the nature of the email, especially if the process requires a manual entry, phone verification or direct contact with the credit card company.
4) Anti Spam Software
Lastly, you should always have at least one, at best two anti spam software products to help keep these types of phishing scams from even getting into your employee’s inboxes. As a great anti spam product can catch 99% plus of all spam, two anti spam software products together will catch a vast majority of spam and keep them from enticing employees to mistakenly affect your network.
With many anti spam options, modusGate offers a great suite of products that can help you boost your spam filters keeping these phishing attacks at bay and keeping employees productive.
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