Just when you thought your employees were well educated about the dangers of spear phishing—or highly targeted hacking—there’s another nautical cybersecurity threat that is growing in popularity.

This nefarious practice, recently outlined in PC World, is called “whaling.” In a typical whaling attack, a hacker will attempt to mimic a member of the C-suite in order to trick a target employee into transferring large sums of money or sensitive data into a private account. Up to 70 percent of whaling cases stem from domain spoofing.  

What’s alarming is that 55 percent of surveyed IT professionals claim that they saw the number of whaling attempts increase during 4Q15. So there is reason to believe this number will continue to increase throughout 2016.

“Whaling emails can be more difficult to detect because they don’t contain a hyperlink or malicious attachment, and rely solely on social engineering to trick their targets,” cybersecurity strategist Orlando Scott-Cowley of Mimecast was quoted as saying in PC World.

Hackers often obtain the details they need to execute whaling attacks from websites like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook where the information they need is publicly available.

Are you exhausting yourself trying to keep your business safe from a data breach? We here at Apex Technology Services feel your pain. As Fairfield county’s premier computer consulting company, we see firsthand just how difficult of a job our customers are having trying to mitigate cybersecurity risks.

So let us help your organization. Apex Technology Services offers first class cybersecurity training courses for managers and employees. We can work with your organization to reduce threats and stay safe online.

Click here for more information.