Phishing for Data: Digital Forensic Integrity

Phishing is a cybercrime in which a target or targets are contacted by email by someone posing as a legitimate institution to lure individuals into providing sensitive data such as personally identifiable information, banking and credit card details and passwords’ (Phishing.org, 2019). Unfortunately, businesses and
employees are often the target of phishing emails, which target four appeals,fear, greed, obedience and helpfulness, to enable a successful cyber-attack against the company. The four appeals are utilised because this targets the human element of the employee; for example, if the employee doesn’t complete the requested task then they have not fulfilled their job role
successfully, which brings fear of receiving disciplinary action within the workplace. By the employee completing the task out of fear, this may provide information to the attacker or install malware on their system to enable them to conduct criminal activity.