KU staff phishing scam emails

Kingston University has warned all staff to watch out for scam emails after university employees received phishing emails that tried to access their bank details.

The information and technology department has notified staff of possible data breaches and have urged them to check their emails for possible phishing threats, by going to the IT security page guidelines.

A Kingston spokesman said: “It’s important that students are aware of the dangers and adopt good practices such as using strong passwords and knowing how to spot phishing emails.

While phishing attempts are a regular occurrence, the technical defenses the University has in place mean the vast majority never reach their intended recipient.

“Cyber security is taken seriously at Kingston University and regular updates and alerts to specific threats are posted on My Kingston and tweeted to followers and notifications are posted on the University’s mobile app.”

Barclays bank issued a notice to all staff employees in UK universities to be aware because they have had fraudsters trying to access personal detail.

“Fraudsters sent a phishing email to an employee purporting to be from the university’s payroll department. This included a link which the employee clicked on and led to a fake university login page where they entered their user name and password details,” Barclays said in an alert they sent out to all universities in the UK.

The alert also stated that fraudsters use the details to access the employee’s payroll information and go to the extend to send a signed letter to the university’s payroll department and also asking for a change of bank details.

Barclays said: “The fraud was only uncovered when salary payments were made to the new fraudulent account.”

Phishing which is the attempt to get personal information through fake emails from a trusted organisation. To spot one of these scam emails one should check if the link in the email is different from the URL.

To learn more about phishing email and ways to avoid visit the security pages on studyspace and if you are a victim of an incident report the attack to it-security@kingston.ac.uk.