Health Information Management

New tech attacks target key employees

HIPAA Weekly Advisor, January 9, 2006

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A new security threat targets employees that have easy access to credit card, bank, and other sensitive data, reports USA Today. Thieves focus on these employees, sending them hard-to-spot e-mails that aim to steal this information.

The e-mails appear to come from business associates and contain malicious code that installs a program on the victim's computer that copies computer data. While e-mail attacks of this sort have previously been a threat, the new type of attack does not rely on sending mass e-mails to all employees. Rather, the e-mails are sent to a few employees who can access important data.

"Most companies think they're okay because their security systems block large-scale attacks," says Alex Shipp, who works on e-mail security products at MessageLabs. "But they may have already been hit by narrow attacks and don't know it."

Click here to read the USA Today article.



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