Cyber-attacks are becoming more and more prevalent among Canadian companies. One of the most common ways of attacking a business is through spam. Spam is email that is sent to an individual and usually contains links about a product or service. The link will then bring you to a harmful website where malware is automatically downloaded to your computer and gains access to sensitive information.

There are many ways you can recognize and avoid spam. Here are a few:

• Do you know the sender? If not, try to find out who it is and why he or she is contacting you before you open the email.
• Are there misspellings or incorrectly used words? Sometimes the person sending the spam will do this so that it can sneak past spam filters.
• Have you been sent something by this person or company before but now the email looks drastically different? It could be a fraudster posing as this person or company because it is already known and trusted.
• Treat emails that sound too good to be true or that request personal information from you with caution.

If you notice your company seems to be getting a lot of spam, there are things you can do to combat this:

• Set up a program that filters out spam.
• Your employee email list should always be kept confidential. If someone outside of the company needs your email address, give him or her a more generic email you use that is not connected to your company email and the information stored within.
• Establish an employee Internet usage policy at your office. This is one of the most useful steps in protecting your company from spam and subsequent cyber-attacks.  It should include guidelines on things such as general security, acceptable Internet use, the use of personal equipment and desktop services security. Make sure all employees sign a copy of an employee Internet usage policy and review it yearly.

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