Why should you report suspicious emails?
Social engineering is based on a very basic principle: "the user is the weakest link". Up to 85% of security breaches involve some form of human error, often unintentional. Based on this idea, cyber attackers use a range of different techniques in order to get the user to reveal sensitive information or infect their computer.
Phishing is one of the most effective and widespread techniques used by cybercriminals to gain access to a company’s system and information.
If we do not know the risks and we do not implement a series of cyber security habits in our day to day, we could give information or access to our systems to a cyber attacker, organised criminals, or other States that want to affect our public institutions, steal our information, carry out espionage or cause a security incident to disrupt us.
The best way to mitigate this risk is to strengthen your human firewall is for you spot and report phishing attempts.
The impact of a security breach. What can happen when cybercriminals are successful?
The impact of a security breach can vary from breach to breach and especially based on what the cybercriminals were after when launching the attack. However, a few common end results of a cyber breach include:
Money lost
The financial impact of a security breach can be significant. According to research done by IBM, a breach caused by phishing costs businesses an average of $4.65 million. This can impact overall business budgets and trickle down to individual employees through layoffs, hiring or salary increase freezes, and other indirect implications.
Read more about the cost of phishing in our blog:
What are the top 10 costs of phishing?
What is the real cost of phishing in 2021?
Business interrupted
Organizations will need to contain the breach and conduct an investigation into how it occurred and what systems were accessed. This process can take days, even weeks, depending on the severity of the breach. This can have a huge knock-on effect on revenue and an organisation’s ability to recover.
Data abused
Not only does the security breach hurt the organization, but consumers can be impacted as well. As the cybercriminals engaged in phishing may have as a goal to steal data, this data can then be abused to further defraud individual consumers. Passwords and personally identifiable data can then be used in a wide variety of fraud, impersonation schemes, and scams, that harm consumers. The breached information can circulate on the dark web for 200+ days and be a bused several times by different actors.
How to recognize and report a suspicious email
Recognizing suspicious emails
6.4 billion email-based attacks are sent every day. Despite having sophisticated security measures in place, some malicious emails will always drip into your inbox. The best way to mitigate this risk is for you to help us spot phishing attempts. Phishing emails can be easy to spot if you know what you are looking for.
If you'd like a more in depth run through of how to recognize phishing and spam, check out: Phishing or Spam - What is the difference?
Reporting suspicious emails
When you come across a suspicious email, you can report it with the Hoxhunt button.
Locating the Hoxhunt button in Outlook
You can read more about locating the Hoxhunt button in Outlook here: Locating Hoxhunt in Outlook
If you have trouble finding the Hoxhunt button check out: Troubleshooting missing Hoxhunt button
Locating the Hoxhunt button in Gmail
You can read more about locating the Hoxhunt button in Gmail here: Locating Hoxhunt in Gmail
If you have trouble finding the Hoxhunt button check out: Troubleshooting missing Hoxhunt button
Once you had found the Hoxhunt button, simply click the Hoxhunt button to report the email. Read more here about reporting phishing and spam emails: Reporting Suspicious Emails (Phishing or Spam)
Remember
Questions?
If you have any questions about reporting suspicious emails, please don't hesitate to reach out to our support team at support@hoxhunt.com