Abstract
Phishing continues to be an initial attack vector for malware, ransomware, and serious IT security incidents in general. The university uses a variety of tools to reduce these attacks, including Area1, a cloud-based service that identifies malicious emails. U-M Gmail users benefit as emails identified as malicious by Area1 are automatically moved to your Spam folder.
Area1 works by identifying specific high-risk characteristics of email. These characteristics include domain spoof emails that appear to originate from U-M, name spoof emails that appear to be from a trusted U-M individual, similar domains with one or two characters that are different from the U-M domain, and attributes spoofing, which provides copycat logos or branding.