Phishing Scams at Work

As a JavaScript exploit wreaked havoc on Twitter.com on the morning of Sept. 21, a survey of small-business IT managers revealed spam as the primary security threat to business networks. Despite the increasing number of malware attacks originating from social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, the managers called those threats “marginal” to businesses.

The latest SMB survey from spam and Web filtering software vendor SpamTitan focused on phishing trends on business and enterprise networks. A full 75 percent of IT managers responded that spam is the biggest source of phishing attempts affecting business users, the SpamTitan survey found.

Phishing attacks are most commonly encountered in e-mail or social network spam, although there are other techniques. As companies implement stricter network security measures to filter out spam from their employees’ in-boxes, there are concerns phishers will just shift their focus to online sites. Employees frequently access social networking sites from work, and even the most savvy users are likely to click on links like “i can’t believe these pics got posted…” or “hey! check out this funny blog…” if they think their friends posted them.

For more, read the eWeek article Phishing Scams Focus on Workplace E-mail, Not Facebook or Twitter.