06/22/2026
North Texas small businesses, it's time for your Monday morning cybersecurity lesson! The topic of the day is Smishing. Smishing is text message phishing, and it's now more effective at reaching people than email phishing.
The reason is mechanical. Most businesses spent the last decade hardening their email gateways and training people on suspicious links. Almost nobody applied the same effort to text messages. The result is a channel where employees still tap first and think later.
The patterns repeat: a "delivery failed" message with a link asking for login credentials, a "this is your CEO" text asking for an update on a project, a fake account-lockout message that looks identical to a real bank alert, or a "hey, I'm in a meeting, can you help me with something quick?" text impersonating a senior person.
These work because texts feel personal in a way email doesn't. They land on the same screen where your spouse, your kids, and your coworkers reach you, which makes the brain default to trusting them. That's the entire attack. The rules to give your team:
1. No business decision happens over text. That includes wire transfers, vendor changes, payroll changes, gift card requests, and password resets.
2. If a text claims to be from a coworker, verify through a different channel before
responding. A 30-second Slack/Teams message or phone call kills most of these attacks.
3. Never click a login link inside a text. Open the app or website directly.
4. Forward suspected smishing to 7726 (which spells SPAM on a phone keypad). Carriers use it to block the source.
Smishing works when the response happens before the thinking. Train your team to slow down, and most of these attacks dead-end before the attacker has time to react.
