This month, UAB IT will implement two changes to the email system intended to strengthen defenses against phishing emails.

On March 29, UAB IT will enable:

• An anti-impersonation feature to help protect faculty, staff and students from fraudulent emails that attempt to impersonate trusted entities — from your boss to the university president.
• A higher threshold for evaluating phishing emails, which should catch more attempts at fraudulent messages.

“These tools give us better bait to catch phish,” said Nick Ficquette, manager of information security operations.

The anti-impersonation feature is intended to help cut down on the number of business email compromise attempts. Business email compromise, or BEC, is a type of attack in which scammers pretend to be your boss or a university official seeking information or even money or gift cards from you.

The increased threshold for phishing emails will add more qualities with which to evaluate potential phish, strengthening our defenses against them.

Users should not see any impact from these changes, aside from a reduction in phishing emails. You can review your quarantine email list, which is sent daily, if you think you’ve missed an email, but use caution when releasing an email from quarantine. If you suspect false positives continue, contact AskIT.

If you suspect you have received a phishing email, you can:

• Report it using the Report Phishing button in Outlook
• Forward it to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.