---
title: "Phishing Attacks: How to Recognize Them and Keep Business Data Safe - U.S. Computer Connection"
description: Cybercrime is on the rise, and hackers are using any opportunity to take advantage of an unknowing victim to gain access to personal information for financial gain. The new ‘work from anywhere world’ makes everyone at risk to cyber attacks, especially because threats are harder to track over home networks. The blurred lines between home […]
---

[Blog - U.S. Computer Connection](https://blog.uscomputer.com)

# [Phishing Attacks: How to Recognize Them and Keep Business Data Safe - U.S. Computer Connection](https://blog.uscomputer.com/phishing-attacks-how-to-recognize-them-and-keep-business-data-safe)

 Written by [Garry Feldman](https://blog.uscomputer.com/author/garry-feldman) | Sep 27, 2021 3:29:25 PM

Cybercrime is on the rise, and hackers are using any opportunity to take advantage of  
 an unknowing victim to gain access to personal information for financial gain. The new  
 ‘work from anywhere world’ makes everyone at risk to cyber attacks, especially because  
 threats are harder to track over home networks. The blurred lines between home and  
 work create security nightmares if safety protocols are ignored, or don’t exist.

One commonly used tactic is phishing. Phishing messages are crafted to deliver a  
 sense of urgency or fear with the end goal of capturing a person’s sensitive data. If your  
 employees fall prey to phishing scams while working from home, it can affect your  
 company network by transferring malware and viruses over internet connections.

 One phishing email has the power to cause downtime for your entire business and unfortunately the scams are getting more sophisticated on a daily basis, thus harder to detect.

# Here are five different types of phishing attacks to avoid:

**1. Spear Phishing**  
 Attackers pass themselves off as someone the target  
 knows well or an organization that they’re familiar  
 with to gain access to compromising information  
 (e.g., credentials or financial information), which is used  
 to exploit the victim.

**2. Whaling**  
 Whaling is a form of spear phishing with a focus on a  
 high-value target, typically a senior employee within  
 an organization, to boost credibility. This approach also  
 targets other high-level employees within an organization  
 as the potential victims and includes an attempt to gain  
 access to company platforms or financial information.

**3. Mass Campaigns**  
 Mass phishing campaigns cast a wider net. Emails are  
 sent to the masses from a knock-off corporate entity  
 insisting a password needs to be updated or credit card  
 information is outdated.

**4. Ambulance Chasing Phishing**  
 Attackers use a current crisis to drive urgency for  
 victims to take action that will lead to compromising  
 data or information. For example, targets may receive  
 a fraudulent email encouraging them to donate  
 to relief funds for recent natural disasters or the  
 COVID-19 global pandemic.

According to Google, it has been reported that  
 cybercriminals have sent an estimated 18 million hoax  
 emails about COVID-19 to Gmail users every day.

**5. Pretexting**  
 Pretexting involves an attacker doing something via a  
 non-email channel (e.g., voicemail) to set an expectation  
 that they’ll be sending something seemingly legitimate  
 in the near future only to send an email that contains  
 malicious links.

# What to do if you think you’ve received a phishing email?

First, to help identify it as a phishing email, check to see  
 if the signed-by field was generated by a DomainKeys  
 Identified Mail (DKIM) or a service. DKIM is a good first  
 step in email authentication and is a technical solution  
 to prove that an email is not fake. For example, if you  
 received an email from name@technology.com, you  
 would see a DKIM in the signature that looks like this:  
 technology-com.20150623.gappssmtp.com. This is how all  
 emails through a domain are processed.

Emails shared through a service (e.g., Drive, Calendar,  
 Dropbox, Box, etc.) do not have a DKIM. Instead, you would  
 see the signature of the provided service  
 (i.e., signed-by dropbox.com).

If you receive a file, and it is not signed by google.com,  
 gmail.com, dropbox.com, it is likely phishing – delete it  
 immediately. It’s important to remain vigilant and proceed  
 with caution in these circumstances.

[View full post](https://blog.uscomputer.com/phishing-attacks-how-to-recognize-them-and-keep-business-data-safe)

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