Internal Audit have been made aware of a Spear Phishing campaign against schools.  Spear Phishing is where individuals are specifically targeted with an email, telephone call or text message that appears to contain information that looks familiar to the recipient, most commonly pretending to come from a known work colleague. 

The fraudsters appear to be targeting School Business Managers and Administrators via email purporting to be the Head Teacher and requesting an urgent payment is made.    

In the cases identified the email address was similar to the genuine one but rather than .sch.uk it was a gmail.com address. Quite often these scam emails also contain spelling mistakes or odd phrasing.  Please be extra vigilant, if it doesn’t look or feel right it probably isn’t.