LPT: create a Label or Flag for external mail on your company email to both organize emails and catch Phishing attempts from your IT department

Submitted by westbee t3_yfqonk in LifeProTips

I work somewhere where our IT department is constantly sending out fake phishing emails to try and catch us off guard and prepare us for real attempts.

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It feels more like they are determined to just catch us for the inevitable punishment of more training.

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So I created a Flag in Gmail that basically puts all external emails right into a folder called EXTERNAL. Once a week I go in and just report every email in it.

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keepthetips t1_iu4p6bi wrote

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spider-bro t1_iu4vx2u wrote

How would a flag on external email catch phishing attempts from the IT department?

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madpacifist t1_iu4wu0f wrote

Replying to spider-bro (#288,168)

Presumably OP is not in a customer facing or B2B position. For many others, however, this blanket approach is going to have a lot of false positives and missed genuine communication.

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guitarstitch t1_iu503o9 wrote

It's all fun and games until you get a ransomware attack.

Interesting that your IT department, good intentioned though they may be, wouldn't use something like KnowB4 instead of a homebrew solution.

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westbee OP t1_iu58vhe wrote

Replying to DroolingSlothCarpet (#289,675)

Not my current corporate email.

Although I have been with several companies that do in fact use business Gmail.

So the company name and url is still in the email such as, Dave@boxcompany.com, but we use gmail as the platform to send/retrieve those emails. Kind of like how most companies use Outlook, we just used Gmail in most of the places I have worked.

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westbee OP t1_iu592zw wrote

Replying to spider-bro (#288,168)

IT department sends emails using external emails. Meaning emails from outside the company.

So I just flag all emails coming in from outside the company.

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westbee OP t1_iu5a76o wrote

Replying to madpacifist (#288,355)

This is true. I used to work for a graphic design department where this would not work at all.

My current job though we don't deal with any external emails at all, so it works great.

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InsideHorror9726 t1_iu6muf7 wrote

If you're doing something which is potentially preventing you from falling for a phishing attempt, it looks like their training was effective.

Especially if you were able to somehow abstract phishing attempts enough to be able to rule them out via built-in rules in your mail server.

Props to your IT team, they're doing a good job.

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