Don’t Get Hooked by Phishing

🛡️ Don’t Get Hooked by Phishing 🎣

Phishing is still the #1 way attackers try to break into healthcare systems. These emails or texts often look like they’re from your boss, IT, or even a trusted vendor — but their goal is to trick you into clicking a bad link, opening an attachment, or sharing a password.

Red flags to watch for:

🚩 Urgency or fear tactics: (“Act now!” “Your account will be closed!”)
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🚩 Look-alike senders: (an email from support@vyncacare.co instead of .com)

🚩 Unusual requests: (gift card purchases, sending PHI, or logging in through a strange link)

How to protect yourself:

✅ Hover over links before clicking — check the real URL.
✅ If in doubt, don’t click — report the email to IT/security.
✅ Never enter your login info on a page you weren’t expecting.

Remember: it only takes one click to let attackers in — but it also only takes one pause to stop them.

🚨 When One Click Shut Down a Hospital

Phishing isn’t just “junk email” — it can bring an entire health system to its knees.

Recently, a small hospital in Oregon fell victim to a single phishing email. The message looked like it came from HR. An employee clicked the link and entered their login information. That was all it took.

Within hours, attackers had access to critical systems. The hospital’s entire IT infrastructure went down. Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) were offline. Providers couldn’t access patient charts, schedule visits, or order medications. Care teams had to scramble with paper records. Patients faced canceled appointments, delays, and confusion — all because of one deceptive email.

Read more here

👉 Your takeaway: Always slow down, double-check, and report anything suspicious. One quick pause can protect our patients, our systems, and our mission

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