You and your employees may be just returning from vacation, but cybercriminals never take a day off. In fact, data shown in studies from vendors ProofPoint and Check Point show that phishing attempts actually spike in the summer months. Here’s how to stay aware and stay protected.
What Is Phishing?
Phishing is a type of cyberattack where criminals impersonate trusted entities—like banks, travel sites, or even coworkers—to trick you into revealing sensitive information. These attacks often arrive via email, text message, or fake websites and can lead to stolen credentials, financial loss, or data breaches.
Example: You receive an email that looks like it’s from your hotel asking you to “confirm your reservation.” The link leads to a fake site that captures your login or payment info.
How to Spot a Phishing Email
Why The Increased Risk?
Attackers use your summer travel bug to their advantage by impersonating hotel and Airbnb websites, says Check Point Research. They’ve uncovered a sharp increase in cyberthreats related to the travel industry—specifically, a 55% increase in the creation of new website domains related to vacations in May 2025, compared to the same period last year. Out of over 39,000 registered domains, approximately 5% were flagged as malicious or suspicious.
Late summer is also back-to-school time, which means an uptick in phishing attempts imitating legitimate university e-mails, targeting both students and staff. While these threats might not affect your industry directly, there’s always a chance that employees pursuing their master’s degree or planning a vacation will check their personal e-mail on their work computer—and it takes only one wrong click for cyber attackers to have access to all of your business’s data.
Real-World Examples of August Phishing Scams
Understanding how phishing plays out in real life helps you spot red flags. Here are a few seasonal examples:
- Fake Travel Confirmations: Emails pretending to be from Airbnb or Expedia with subject lines like “Your booking is incomplete” or “Urgent: Payment issue.”
- Back-to-School Scams: Messages that appear to come from universities asking students or staff to “verify your campus login” or “update your student portal.”
- HR Impersonation: Emails claiming to be from your company’s HR team asking you to “review updated vacation policies” or “submit your PTO balance.”
What To Do to Keep Yourself Safe from Phishing Attacks
While AI is making cybersecurity stronger and workflows smoother, it’s also making phishing attacks more convincing. That’s why it’s important to train yourself and your team on what to look for, to avoid clicking on a malicious link.
Safety tips to prevent attacks:
- Keep an eye out for shady e-mails. Check not only for misspellings and poorly formatted sentences in the body of e-mails; AI can write e-mails for attackers just like it can for you. Also examine the e-mail address of the sender and the text of the link itself, if visible, to make sure everything looks legitimate.
- Double-check URLs. Misspellings in the link text or unusual domain endings, like .today or .info, can be an indicator of an attack. Scam sites often use domain endings like these.
- Visit websites directly. It’s always better to search for the website yourself, rather than clicking on links in any messages or e-mails.
- Enable Multifactor Authentication (MFA). Setting up MFA ensures that even if a breach occurs within your company, your login credentials will remain protected—and so will any data secured behind them.
- Be careful with public Wi-Fi. If you need to use public Wi-Fi, use a VPN for additional protection when accessing secure information, like booking portals or bank accounts.
- Don’t access personal e-mail on company devices. Accessing personal e-mail, messaging or social media accounts on business devices increases your risk. Keep personal accounts on your personal devices, and work-related accounts on the work devices.
- Ask your MSP about endpoint security. Endpoint detection and response (EDR) software can monitor your desktops and mobile devices, detect and block phishing attempts and malicious downloads, and alert your MSP immediately in the event of a breach, drastically limiting your data’s exposure.
Phishing attempts become more sophisticated every day, and AI is only speeding that process along. Because of this, it’s essential to keep your team well-informed of the risks; knowledge is the best defense against phishing attacks. Stay informed and stay safe!
Start the season secure—book your FREE Cybersecurity Assessment today.
Phishing Attack FAQs
What are common phishing scams in August?
Travel-related scams and fake university emails are especially common. Attackers know people are booking trips or preparing for school and use that to their advantage.
How can I tell if an email is a phishing attempt?
Look for mismatched sender addresses, urgent language, suspicious links, and unexpected attachments. When in doubt, don’t click—verify with the sender directly.
Is AI making phishing more dangerous?
Yes. AI tools can generate convincing emails with perfect grammar and tone, making it harder to spot scams based on writing quality alone.
What should I do if I click a phishing link?
Immediately disconnect from the internet, report the incident to your IT or MSP team, and change any compromised passwords. If sensitive data was entered, consider freezing credit or monitoring accounts.
