Email marketing is still a valuable tool for businesses, but it must be done with care or at best, your carefully crafted messages could end up going straight to a spam or junk folder, and at worst, run you afoul …

One of the decisions I see my customers consider time and again is how to handle quarantined mail. They deploy a spam filtering solution of some type, and it does an effective job of blocking junk from getting to users’ inboxes, but inevitably, there’s going to be a false positive in there somewhere, and my clients wonder what the best way to handle that is. In today’s post, let’s take a look at the dreaded false positive, what it can mean for both users and IT, and options for how to handle it.

A huge new spam campaign is pounding the net with ransomware laden messages. The messages claim to offer breaking news and exclusive videos about the Boston Marathon bombings and subsequent manhunt that gripped the city with fear. Instead the links lead the user …

It’s no secret that as quickly as we make ways to stop the madness, the spammers are finding ways to pump up the volume. The spam landscape is becoming more dangerous than ever, if that’s even possible, and it seems that the spammers have decided to put their knives and pistols away in favour of anti-ballistic missiles and nukes. Now, if that all seems like hyperbole to you, you’re absolutely right. But exaggeration doesn’t necessarily not make it so, good grammar be damned.

We’ve been reporting for a while now the new sightings of dangerous new spam campaigns, most notably the faux Facebook message that leads you to believe that a friend has tagged you in a photo, and a phony LinkedIn email that tries to suck you into clicking a link to find out why some dude you’ve never heard of is trying to connect with you.

In both instances, the messages are quite convincing. They’re clean and devoid of the obvious stuff that normally tips us off that the messages are from some clown with the language skills of a bearded dragon. They’re personalized, both in the subject line and the body of the message, giving you a name that’s randomized so you rarely get the same message twice. They even give you a little personal information about the fake sender. One recent message comes to mind, where an Anne Johnson, Store Manager at Jos. A. Bank Clothiers, was the ‘sender’. All this, of course, is meant to throw you off your game just long enough so that the itchy little index finger you’ve been clicking with all day falls prey to the centuries-old argument: “shucks, one more click’s not going to hurt nothin’.”

  Security experts are warning Australians to beware of a new spam campaign exploiting the Boston Marathon bombings. The campaign, which is sending out messages made to look like news stories about the attacks, delivers a malicious payload. Subject lines such …

    Hewlett-Packard is the latest big corporation to be brandjacked. A new spam campaign is taking advantage of a feature found in HP printers. The feature lets users scan a document and email it right from the printer. The …

You know, we’ve heard so much over the past two years about the dangerous new onslaught of malware-ridden spam that was just around the corner, we failed to actually notice that we’ve taken the corner and been driving for awhile now. Threats of black hat spam have got some of use freaked out by the very scientific (and scary) use of data science methods to create entirely believable personas online. Blackhole 2.0 hit the ground running, a nasty little frontend for anyone who wants to mess up your day by dumping payloads that would shame an African elephant.  Botnets like Zeus and Cutwail are alive and well and wreaking mayhem at a computer near you. And the rise of social media spam and new threats on iOS and Android devices leaves us with an uneasy suspicion that the spammers actually have a strategy. Hmm.

  A new spam campaign is using an old technique – fake news stories. This time they are taking advantage of the rising tensions between North Korea and the rest of the world, specifically the United States. The subject line …

Many people who work in IT often look upon training users as an exasperating experience. Conversely, users often view training programs as a boring waste of time. When both sides take this approach, if often results in a self-fulfilling prophecy.

However training users how to spot illicit email messages can be something that pays off in the long run, if the training program is done right.

While this article is not going to tell you how to develop a training program for identifying spam, it will help to encourage you and your management by showing what the benefits to a solid, meaningful email security training program can be.

Hate spam all you like. Despise spammers even more, but you have to admit that they’re resilient and darn it all, they’re downright wily. You’ve probably seen it all in the bowels of your server rooms, spam filters full of some of the worst stuff these jerks can throw at you. Most days, you probably feel like you need a shower every time you review it. You’ve committed to memory every stunt, every devious little attempt to circumvent, every clickable bomb, as a what not to do manual for the righteous. You’ve seen it all and you know it all. But do your staff?

It’s a safe bet that most of us are so busy dealing with the day to day mundaneness of life in the modern Orc forges known as IT departments, that we don’t really stop to consider just how well-armed our front lines are. Remember, one errant clicker may open up your network like a broadsword cutting down a soldier and opening the line for the enemy to enter.

So how many of you actually have a spam tactics manual? Hopefully, you’ve all answered in the affirmative, but of all the information that new employees receive on their orientation day, it’s a safe bet that they are sadly lacking in some fundamental training that could mitigate serious threats to the organization.

In fact, as we speak, new spam attacks are rampant, and they’ve become even more devious than ever. They’re so good, in fact, that it’s a cinch they’ll make it through the best spam filters. And to the untrained eye, they could be the click-candy that spells out devastation for you and your organization. And, if what we hear is true, things are getting much worse. These are serious enough threats that it merits a general staff sitdown, if you haven’t had one recently. There are new threats occurring every day, so hopefully this article will be a primer that you can use to implement your organization’s spam tactics manual.