Stay alert and expose online scams

Over the next month, the chances of you encountering suspicious emails in your inbox will increase. This is because the IT department will be conducting one of several planned phishing exercises at UiA.

Half of all emails are spam or scams

Phishing refers to scam attempts via email. The goal might be financial gain, access to sensitive information, or identity theft.

"It's estimated that around half of all emails are spam or scam attempts. Most of these are stopped before they reach your inbox. But some will always get through," says Johanne Warberg Lavold.

She is a senior advisor at the IT department and is responsible for information security for staff and students at UiA.

How to Spot a Scam

There are several things you can do to detect phishing:

• Check the sender's email address - don't trust the name. If you're reading the message on a mobile phone, you need to tap on the sender to see the email address.
• Don't click on unknown links; hover your mouse over the link to check where it really leads. If the link goes to an unfamiliar place and not where it claims to, don't click on it.
• Look in the browser's address bar to see where you are. For example: visitatrani.it has nothing to do with the post office:

Read more about how to handle phishing attacks on Innaskjærs (Norwegian only) 

If you're among the first to report the message in the exercise (see the above link for how to do it), you're also entered into a prize draw.

An increasing threat

"We're conducting the exercise for the first time this autumn and will repeat it regularly. Just last month, two employees were tricked into giving away their usernames and passwords. This shows that we need to continue being vigilant about security," says senior engineer Helge Høynes at the IT department.

Both he and Lavold see that the threat to online security is increasing. This is due to both the tense international situation and the rise of artificial intelligence, which can make attacks easier. 

More sophisticated attacks

"Now that UiA accounts are protected by two-factor authentication, we're stopping more attacks. But scammers are becoming increasingly sophisticated," says Lavold.

She says that several employees have become concerned when emails identified as scam attempts have disappeared from their inboxes.

"It doesn't mean that someone has logged into your account. We can remove such emails from the server when they're detected," she says.

As part of the security efforts, all leaders at UiA will also be offered a course in information security this autumn.