Recognising suspicious messages and what to do with them

Recognising suspicious messages and knowing what to do with them is a good first step to cyber security awareness. We’ve created this series of videos to help you and your people learn about how to spot suspicious messages and what to do with them.

Help your people to stop, think and act.

By keeping our patient and organisation’s information safe, we can protect everybody.

It’s easy to click on links in text scams when we are busy or distracted. If you accidentally do, your device could end up infected with harmful software and your personal details could be used to infect other devices.

Look for the warning signs and take a second to think before acting. Ask yourself:

• Am I expecting this?
• Why do I need to click a link?
• Does this feel right to me?

While links in messages may be normal, not all links can be trusted.

Malicious websites often hide behind links in the hope they won’t be checked.

Next time you get a message with a link – stop.

Think whether the message makes sense to you, hover over the link address to check it’s what you’d expect to see.

Then act, knowing you’ve done your safety checks before clicking.

We handle a lot of sensitive information. Our patients, whānau and kaimahi (employees), trust us to keep their information safe. Learn more about phishing emails and how to recognise suspicious messages.

Received a surprise email saying you’ve won a competition? Someone asking for your bank details out of the blue?

Cyber criminals send scams in many different ways, including by email (phishing), text (smishing) or calling (vishing), often collectively referred to as “the three shings”.

Do you know what to do if you suspect a scam?

The best action is to report the email, delete the text message or hang up on the suspicious caller.

Don’t take any chances. Whether it’s email, text, or calls, staying vigilant keeps our information safe.

If you do think you need to share any work or personal information, always verify that whoever is asking is legitimate.

Check with your organisation about how you report phishing, smishing and vishing as you may have a different process than shared in this video.