How Seguin Leaders are Working to Better Tackle Phishing
Several years ago, McDaniel was in search of new cybersecurity tools to help the city manage its “uncontrolled” email environment. “We did not have any specific losses related to phishing, but it was only a matter of time,” he says.
The city opted for Mimecast solutions, including the Internal Email Protect tool, to better provide the sort of perimeterless protection that McDaniel notes is needed to combat modern cyberthreats.
Almost immediately, he says, city employees noticed a drop in unsolicited junk emails from spammers and scammers. The tool blocks about 20 to 25 percent of the roughly 1 million emails to city employees each year. It also sandboxes traffic resulting from links contained in emails, opening them outside of the city’s environment and preventing any malicious software from infecting Seguin’s network.
McDaniel stresses the danger of phishing during orientation for new hires, explaining that many of the attacks are aimed at stealing money directly from their personal finances.
“We’re only as strong as our weakest link,” he says. “I want our employees to be comfortable enough that if they see something that doesn’t look right, they’ll say something — shoot me an email, call me on my personal cell. We’re all one big team, and we need to rely on everybody.”
