Payroll was hit repeatedly this week with change bank requests. The requests looked legitimate. They came from a Mount Royal employee and the email address displayed was correct.

 

Fortunately, this wasn’t Payroll’s first rodeo and they knew that the sender’s email address was just a text field. An attacker could easily enter anything they like into that field. They also knew to verify that the request was actually made by the displayed sender. For this reason, they created a new, second email with a screen shot of the one received and asked the displayed sender if they had in fact sent the email. The answer was no.

Payroll’s quick thinking saved themselves and their colleagues days of heartache and a whole lot of money. This is a great illustration of why it is so important to verify that an email is legitimate before you act on it, even if the sending email address is correct. Just by taking a few extra minutes to send a new message, text or call; you can avert disaster and save the day just like Payroll did.