Cybersecurity Awareness Month: Recognize and Report Phishing

Michelle MachenOur Stories

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Every October, we join a nationwide effort to spotlight the importance of cybersecurity. Whether you're working from home, in the office, or on the go, protecting your digital environment is essential to keeping our organization—and yourself—safe.
Use of strong passwords is an easy way to protect your accounts. Simple passwords, such as 12345, or common identifying information, like birthdays and pet names, are not safe for protecting important accounts holding personal information. Using an easy-to-guess password is like locking the door but leaving the key in the lock. Weak passwords can quickly be broken by computer hackers. But it’s impossible to remember a unique strong password for every account!

Strengthen your passwords with three simple tips. A strong password follows ALL THREE of these tips.

  1. Recognize

Look for these common signs:

    • Urgent or emotionally appealing language, especially messages that claim dire consequences for not responding immediately
    • Requests to send personal and financial information
    • Untrusted shortened URLs
    • Incorrect email addresses or links, like amazacom

A common sign used to be poor grammar or misspellings although in the era of artificial intelligence (AI) some emails will now have perfect grammar and spelling, so look out for the other signs.

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View Tip Sheet – English
View Tip Sheet – Spanish

    1. Resist

    If you suspect phishing, resist the temptation to click on links or attachments that seem too good to be true and may be trying to access your personal information. Instead, report the phish to protect yourself and others. Typically, you’ll find options to report near the person’s email address or username. You can also report via the “report spam” button in the toolbar or settings.

    1. Delete

    Delete the message. Don’t reply or click on any attachment or link, including any “unsubscribe” link. Just delete.

    If a message looks suspicious, it's probably phishing. However, if you think it could be real, don't click on any link or call any number in the message. Look up another way to contact the company or person directly:

      • Go to the company's website and capture their contact information from the verified website. Search for the site in your web browser or type the address yourself if you’re sure you know it.
      • Use another way to reach the person to confirm whether they contacted you. For example, if you get a strange message from your friend on Facebook, and you have their phone number, text or call them to ask if they sent the message.