McDonalds (Philippines) is the latest fast food chain to choose TitanHQ as its partner to protect employees from phishing attacks.

McDonalds operates more than 500 restaurants in the Philippines and all of those restaurants will now be protected with TitanHQ’s anti-spam solution, SpamTitan. Under the terms of the agreement, TitanHQ has been tasked with keeping employee inboxes free from email spam and protecting its network from other email-borne threats such as malware and ransomware.

Email spam has declined in recent years following the take down of large botnets by international task forces, yet the threat from phishing has never been greater. The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) has recently released a report that shows phishing attacks in 2016 have spiked. In the first quarter of the year, APWG reported there were more phishing attacks “than at any other time in history”.

Phishing attacks have also become far more sophisticated, making it harder for employees to identify phishing emails. Unfortunately, all it takes is for one employee to fall for a single phishing email for a network to be compromised. Employing a robust and powerful anti-spam solution has never been more important.

SpamTitan was chosen to protect all McDonalds restaurants in the Philippines for the excellent level of protection offered, but also due to the simplicity of the solution. As McDonalds (Philippines) IT manager Ramon Rivera III explains, “SpamTitan’s best feature is that it simply works as promised with immediate results.  The product is incredibly powerful and yet simple to manage.”

The increase in phishing attacks and the rise in the use of ransomware has prompted many fast food chains to re-evaluate their cybersecurity defenses; however, it is not only employees that need to be protected.

McDonalds has recently announced that it will also be taking action to reduce the risk to customers who connect to its in-restaurant Wi-Fi networks. In order to protect minors, McDonalds will be implementing a web filtering solution to prevent users of its restaurant Wi-Fi networks from accessing pornography. All McDonalds restaurants are to be protected by a web filtering solution which will prevent inappropriate web content from being accessed by any of its customers.

McDonalds is setting an example which other fast food chains are following. After the decision to start offering family-friendly Wi-Fi was announced by McDonalds, Starbucks followed suit. The coffee shop chain is currently looking for a web filtering solution to ensure its coffee shop Wi-Fi networks are 100% family friendly.