Christmas is a particularly high risk period, with attackers hoping that people will drop their guard and click on links in emails (‘Phishing emails’).
Examples include:
- ‘Work’ looking links – “Your account is about to expire – click here to keep it active”, “Please click here to review a Document in OneDrive”
- ‘Entertaining’ links – “Click here to see an amusing festive video”
- ‘Personal’ links – “We were unable to deliver your parcel – please click here to rearrange delivery” (it’s worth noting that this is a very active current scam involving phone text messages)
As part of ongoing staff training to help spot and deal with such attempted attacks, ICT do send out regular ‘test’ emails of this type but have suspended these ‘test emails’ until January 2022 – any email that you receive after Monday 20 December until at least Friday 7 January is not a test email generated by ICT and should therefore be treated as a genuine attempted attack.
If you believe that you may have clicked on a link that you should not have done
Providing you have not responded to any request made in the link to enter your password the damage is likely to be localised, but please shut down your laptop and contact the ICT ServiceDesk immediately by telephoning x3888 during normal office hours.
If the incident is outside office hours (including the upcoming periods from 25 – 29 December and from 1 – 3 January) please contact the MVDC Emergency Planning Duty Officer on 01372 376533; the Duty Officer will in turn be able to contact ICT if they deem it necessary to do so.
If you have not clicked on a link in a Phishing email
Providing that you have not clicked on a link in a Phishing email there is no need to contact ICT (but please do report it using the Phish Alert button visible at the top of your email inbox or when reading the actual email).
