Fraudsters often impersonate senior leaders, colleagues, students, or IT staff to make messages seem legitimate. We are seeing an increase in impersonation within Microsoft Teams, for example, pretending to be from the University’s Vice‑Chancellor’s Executive, in addition to the around 1,000 fake emails we receive each week impersonating senior leaders.
Pause before acting on any unexpected request, especially urgent or unusual ones.
Verify the request via another channel:
- Call the person
- Message them on Teams
- Send them a quick email
Block and report suspicious contacts
In Teams you can preview external messages before opening and you can choose to block the contact at any time.
For emails, you can block the sender and report a suspicious email in Outlook so our security team can check it.
If you click a link or reply by mistake, contact the IT Service Desk for support.
Always remain alert to impersonation and phishing messages. For more guidance, visit our Information Security page.
