Consumers were attacked on line 750,296,307 times in 2018*

I was reading the * Malwarebytes 2019 'State of Malware' Report today and one part of it that particularly interested me was related to Phishing Attacks.   The reason I found this particularly interesting is that I seem to get A LOT of phishing emails.   I won't go into all of the reasons why, but a lot of it has to do with the fact that I own a couple dozen domain names including this one and I don't try to hide my identity on any of them.   You can easily find me at Bill@Since1849.com on many of those sites as well as on the sites of many of our insurance companies.  I HATE phishing emails and I particularly resent what is called 'spear phishing' attacks.   Simply put, a phishing attack might appear to be from American Express or Google or Sam's Club or a bank.   They are often fairly general and claim that you need to log on to a website to check or reset your password.   Spear phishing on the other hand is very direct and appears to be a more personal email from someone that you work with or perhaps someone that is a vendor or insurance company.   They may have links, but more likely they might have attachments that are named things like Invoice or Your Order or Payment or SexyPic or whatever - - - all of these are designed to trick you into opening the document and view it.   Sometimes they are harmless, but more often they contain Trojans or Viruses that are designed to compromise your computer or help the 'actor' gain access to information on your network.

I report all Phishing Emails that I receive to a clearing house that investigates and tracks down the attacker and uses the analysis to help strenthen anti-virus products like Malwarebytes.   This sounds incredible, but In 2018 I PERSONALLY received nearly 200 unique phishing emails including 25 in December 2018 alone! That figure does not count duplicates; it does not count our staff; it does not count the ones that were stripped by our Firewall; it does not count the ones that went into my Junk email... those are all emails that someone intended for me to read and open.   

I urge you to read the Malwarebytes articles; I urge you to set up defenses like Firewalls and anti-virus and anti-malware products and VPNs and managed DNS solutions; I urge you to have current and off-site backup solutions; I urge you to have proper Cyber Insurance; I urge you to use a great password manager (like LastPass); but most of all I urge you to be ultra-cautious so that you are not caught in one of these incidious traps.   Our office is continuously beiing alerted to phishing schemes and you too need to educate yourself and your family and your employees and colleagues to this growing menace.   We have (on this website) secure ways that you can communicate with us and secure methods to encrypt and protect attachments and emails that you want to send us... use those resources whenever sensitive or confidential information has to be exchanged. 

As always, if you want to talk to us about Cyber Insurance or even just the resources that we've relied on to help improve our netword security, call or write Mitchell Insurance and talk to any one of us about your needs and concerns.