Question
Several employees received a fraudulent text message from someone claiming to be the Chief Executive Officer (CEO). The message stated:
“I’m in an airport right now with no access to email. I need you to buy gift cards for employee recognition awards. Please send the gift cards to the following email address.”
Which of the following are the best responses to this situation? (Choose two.)
- A. Cancel current employee recognition gift cards.
- B. Add a smishing exercise to the annual company training. Correct
- C. Issue a general email warning to the company. Correct
- D. Have the CEO change phone numbers.
- E. Conduct a forensic investigation on the CEO’s phone.
- F. Implement mobile device management.
Explanation
This is a smishing attempt using CEO impersonation and a gift-card request. The best responses are to warn all employees now with a general email so nobody acts on the message, and to add smishing to security awareness training so staff recognize it in the future. Cancelling gift cards, changing the CEO's number or examining the CEO's phone do not help, because the attacker never used the CEO's real phone, and mobile device management does not control texts sent from outside numbers.
