The COVID-19 pandemic forced us to stay and work from home more than we ever expected, and this is the reason why we have to learn how to protect our home network from different phishing threats.
Your home network is usually more exposed to different computer attacks because is less used and less protected compared to the computer used at work, and which is part of a larger and more protected network.
However, if you have to do your job from home, you can learn how to recognize phishing scams and prevent them from getting your personal information.
How to Recognize Phishing Attacks While Working from Home?
Scammers use email or other types of messages to trick you and make you give your personal data (including here account numbers, Social Security numbers, passwords) to them.
It is very important to recognize a phishing message in your inbox because these messages usually use logos and headers that look like the ones used by major online companies to trick you into considering that you received a message from a company that you work with.
These messages usually ask you to update your account or payment details, and if you don’t recognize that this message is sent by scammers, and you give them your credentials, this can have real consequences for you.
How to Prevent Phishing When Working from Home?
Your home network is usually used by other members of your family (which may include children).
If you protect your home network from different online attacks (including phishing), you will also protect all the devices in the home network.
There are several steps to protect your devices from phishing attacks.
1. Protect the computers in your home network by installing security software
Phishing protection includes protection software installed on your computer.
Before using the computer to surf the web, always install security software (an antivirus program) to protect you from different cyber attacks. Choose a security software that allows you to extend the protection to all the computers in your network, and set the antivirus to update automatically.
2. Protect your mobile phone
Your mobile phone is also connected to the home network, and uses mobile apps to connect you to your online accounts.
Phishing prevention software on mobile phone involves security software installed on your mobile phone to protect it from online attacks. To maximize the potential of the software to protect your device, the program must be set to update automatically.
3. Protect All Your Accounts using Multi-Factor Authentication
Modern phishing email prevention includes multi-factor authentication, which provides extra protection by requiring two or more additional data when logging into your account.
The additional credentials may include a security code (is changed every time you log in) sent to your phone, or something more personal, such as your fingerprint, your retina, your face, etc.
4. Back Up Your Data To Protect It
To prevent phishing scams at home and provide additional protection for your precious data, you can copy the most important files in your computer to an external hard drive (that is connected to the network) or to cloud storage.
Don’t forget to back up the data on your mobile phone as well.
How to Handle Phising Messages Landing in your Inbox?
How to always avoid phishing when working from home?
To be sure that you are 100% protected from phishing, never click the links or open the attachment in an email that asks you to log in into your account to update your payment details or other sensitive data.
When you receive such a message (if it’s not filtered by the spam software), always call the phone number or contact the website which you know is real, to ask them if they’ve sent the message.
The best practice when receiving a suspicious message is to report it, and then delete it.
Conclusion
If you accidentally clicked the links provided in phishing messages, update security software on your computer right away, and perform a deep scam of the system to block any harmful malware installed when you clicked the link or you opened the attachment in that message.
