Did you hear about the recent spear-phishing epidemic, a more highly targeted variant of phishing, which is taking the corporate world by storm? This leading email-borne terror can break your business reputation and compromise your account in a matter of hours. Did you know more than 90% of successful data breaches find their source in a phishing attack? What’s more, even your time-tested email security gateways don’t get you covered against these threats. So, if you want to protect your company from phishing scams, check your phish-prone employees and turn your organisation phishing savvy. Here are some insightful tips:
What is phishing?
Phishing is a scam that mainly targets your mailbox contacts by impersonating one of your organisation prominent figures and asks victims to reveal sensitive information. This information can be your usernames, passwords, credit card details, and anything confidential. The attacks are so personalised that they don’t come with any malicious links or attachments most of the time. Therefore, users are unaware when they leak out the details. In fact, statistics reveal that more than 95% of companies have untraceable spear-phishing attacks in their inboxes. Not cool, huh!
How to detect phishing?
Well, detecting a phishing attempt is no easy deal, more so, when your traditional security software can’t always detect them. But still, some knowledge and awareness can keep you ahead of the curve and help you predict it in advance. An attacker will study your organisation and its employees thoroughly, they will draft an email that looks professional and legitimate, ask you to enter your credentials, and they might even ask you to click on malicious links. In some cases, they might have a fake website too, ask you to make a payment, or even disguise as a CEO or any leading figure of your company. So, now that you jotted some insights into the spear-phishing tactic, let’s learn how to quarantine this attack. it’s time to get ready and not fall prey to the bad guys.
How to prevent it?
Usually, the most targeted departments within a company are Finance, HR, IT and the CEO. Some tips on how to fight back spear-phishing include:
- Do a real-time inspection of your web traffic and stop malicious links
- Adopt a phishing simulation and employee testing program
- Launch an inbound email sandboxing solution to mitigate vulnerable links
- Remind your users to check an email link carefully before they click on it
- Confirm with the sender when an email looks familiar yet suspicious
- Stop passing critical information via email
- Behaviour-oriented endpoint protection can work the best
In an era where cyber threats are skyrocketing costing Australian businesses an average of $1.92 Million, keeping a proactive approach in your business’ security becomes imperative.
At getNEXT we are committed to helping our customers safeguard their IT integrity and ensure their business continuity, focusing on business outcomes, not technology solutions alone. Get in touch today to see how we can help your business.
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