Phishing is a sort of online scam where people impersonate legitimate individuals or businesses to get access to your personal information or money.
While today’s messaging email providers make it hard for these scammers to be successful, numerous people still become victims of their tactics.
Therefore, phishing prevention has become critical as more offenders turn to the internet to commit a crime. We’ve learned to ignore and delete spam emails, but phishing emails can appear to be from a credible source.
Some even have your name on them. Since you will likely deal with a phishing attack sooner or later, you must learn to spot the red flags. Online scams are nothing new. However, phishing is trickier to spot than you might think.
Every day, phishing attacks con innocent victims into handing over social security numbers, bank account information, and more.
Furthermore, cybercriminals have become even clever with their scams. Sometimes these cons hide behind people and places you know and trust, such as your family members, friends, bank, and the government. Even if you just open the email or message, you can become a victim.
What Exactly is Phishing?
Phishing convinces you to take an action which gives a scammer access to:
- Your banking account, including the routing number
- Your credit card number
- Your email and messaging accounts
- Your personal information
- Your electronic device
By pretending to be someplace or someone you trust, they can more easily steal from you or infect your online accounts and cellphones, tablets, laptops, or computers with malware.
These scams will entice you to open a link or attachment, fill out a form, or reply with personal information. This is why you must always be alert when online as well as when using your cellphone. The risk of phishing is that it can mislead anyone who isn’t suspicious of even the smallest details.
How Phishing Works
Anyone who is online or owns a cellphone could become a victim of a phishing scam.
It’s critical to know that these threats don’t stop with just you. If a scammer gets into your contact list from your phone or email account, they can spam people on your contact list with phishing messages supposedly from you.
Trying to gain your trust is what makes phishing so threatening and misleading. If the con artist can persuade you to trust them and to act before recognizing it’s a phishing scam, you’re an easy target.
How to Spot Phishing Attacks
To stay one step ahead, scammers constantly change their tactics to align with contemporary trends or news. For instance, they will typically invent a phony storyline to sway you into clicking on an attachment or a link. Despite their appearance, these messages are probably from a scammer who could:
- Deceitfully claim to have noticed suspicious activity
- Claim there’s a problem with your payment or account information
- Ask you to verify financial or personal details that are pointless
- Attach unnamed fake invoices
- Urge you to click on a link embedded with malware
- Tell you that you qualify for some type of government money, which is really a scam
- Provide you with counterfeit coupons for free items
Though legitimate businesses might use email to communicate, they won’t send you a link in a text or email for you to update your payment information.
Not only do phishing emails and texts have severe consequences for people who mistakenly give scammers their personal information, but they could also damage the reputations of the businesses they are impersonating.
Therefore, the golden rule to identifying a phishing attack is to consider every email or text a possible threat. Whether the sender is familiar or if the email is a reply to one you sent, always be suspect if an email or text contains an attachment, link, or request for confidential information
Email scammers are experts in creating fake domains and email accounts. They may use social engineering to gather personal information and then send phishing emails to contacts.
Many of the suggestions used to spot phishing attacks are useless. For instance, putting your mouse over URLs might not expose a phishing attack if the email is from an infected business account or if the URL is a good fake. Additionally, bad grammar and spelling aren’t obvious signs.
If you aren’t sure about an email, confirm it’s real by communicating with the assumed sender. If you can’t do that, contact someone in a position of authority, possibly an IT staff member. If you mistakenly open a malicious attachment or link, it’s imperative to act immediately to stop an attack from spreading.
Understanding Phishing Attacks
Nowadays, cybersecurity is vital, especially for businesses. As technology advances, so do the security threats that you face. You can defend your organization from these perilous attempts by making sure your employees are alert and educated in understanding and recognizing phishing attacks.
Email phishing is one of the most predominant types of phishing attacks. However, it’s critical to be aware of the other types of phishing. Text message phishing attack is sometimes referred to as smishing and usually, the text contains the same type of message as an email.
Phone call phishing attack is referred to as vishing. In this sort of attack, the criminal calls the target while pretending to be a representative of a recognized company. The criminal will usually demand the victim to put money into a certain account, provide personal information, or send money electronically (i.e. Western Union).
As stated earlier, phishing attacks may be very hard to detect. Attackers frequently use techniques like spoofing, which is disguising oneself as a reliable source to trick people into giving their personal information. Additionally, they use methods such as phishing kits to make their websites and emails appear authentic.
Best Practices to Preventing Phishing Attacks in Your Business
For businesses, there are best practices that could be implemented to prevent phishing attacks.
Implementing Strong Security Measures
One practice is the use of strong security measures, like using SSL security and routine software and security system updates. To detect and eliminate phishing assaults, businesses could also implement anti-phishing software and solutions such as intrusion detection systems and firewalls.
Perform Frequent Security Audits
To find and fix any possible susceptibilities in your organization’s technology, another best practice is to perform frequent security audits and testing. For example, penetration testing imitates a real attack to locate any vulnerabilities that hackers may use.
Employee Training and Education
Companies must take active measures to educate employees and other users about the dangers of phishing attempts and how to detect them. This might include training, awareness campaigns, and guidelines on handling suspicious communications and emails.
Continuously teach your staff how to identify and prevent becoming a victim of a phishing scam. Provide demonstrations of usual phishing methods such as fake login sites and sudden requests for personal information. Encourage staff to verify the legitimacy of all requests for sensitive information and to be cautious of unsolicited emails, texts, or phone calls.
Use of Anti-Phishing Software
To protect against disreputable websites and emails, use anti-phishing software. When staff members see suspicious emails, these tools could warn them and prevent additional phishing attempts.
Using Email Filtering
You could flag or block questionable emails and filter out apparent phishing emails. In addition to reducing the chance of a successful phishing attempt, this will prevent dangerous emails from coming into employees’ inboxes.
Use Two-Factor Authentication
Two-factor authentication attaches an extra layer of security by requesting a second form of verification and a password like a fingerprint, face scan, or a code sent to a phone. Now, getting into an employee’s account criminally is significantly more difficult for scammers to do.
Regular Monitoring and Testing
Monitor and test security systems regularly to detect phishing attempts and take suitable action. Running simulated phishing attacks may be one way to discover staff members who are susceptible and assess how well the security safeguards in place are functioning.
Encryption Use
If a phishing attack occurs, encrypt sensitive data, like personal and financial information, to keep it obscured from prying individuals. Be sure to keep all software and operating systems up-to-date to ensure that they are protected from vulnerabilities that phishing scammer can use to their advantage.
Incident Response Plan
Create an incident response plan that summarizes the steps to be taken in case of a phishing attack. This plan must include practices for recognizing and containing the attack and instructions for informing the proper authorities about the incident.
How Elevate Can Help
If your company unfortunately becomes a victim of a phishing attack, then it’s critical you can discover and react fast. Partnering with a provider that offers outsourced IT support in Denver can help take some of the pressure off your IT team by monitoring your technology for irregular user behavior and unwanted changes to files.
Contact us to learn how we can help you recognize and prevent phishing attacks in your organization.