Don't post your email

Organisations make huge investments in IT security, but often overlook simple data leakages:individual staff members' email addresses.

This might not seem very significant, but as businesses get their technical security in order, hackers are having to resort to other methods to gain access. These often include targeted phishing attacks to specific end users that generally bypass mail filters. If the user clicks on a link, they may unwittingly open themselves up to installation of a back door.

Targeted phishing attacks need target email addresses, so here are some examples of how you might get some.

Simply search Google for "@domain.com", where "domain" is the name of the organisation. Google indexes newsgroups, websites, and even email addresses in the public domain.

Any of your employees who have used their work email on an indexed site will have had their addresses cached by Google. Similarly, if you publish email addresses on your corporate website, these too will be indexed.