Phishing, the most common method of stealing user data poses a serious threat to the security and safety of user data. Thousands of organizations are targeted by hackers all around the world. Only a few businesses know how to effectively protect from phishing against these hackers from these damaging attacks.
What is a Phishing Scam?
Phishing is a type of cybercrime in which hackers aim to trick users into falling for a scam by different methods and end up revealing their data such as financial information, system credentials and other user data.
This information is then used to access target accounts which leads to a financial loss. This can also trigger a security risk and reputation loss of a business. These scams were traditionally used by email and now are also being used by other means such as text(smishing) and phone (vishing).
How Does It Work?
A cheap and effective way to gain credentials and other sensitive data. Cybercriminals use three major methods to steal information.
- Malicious Links
- Attachments
- Data Entry Forms
As links and attachments are common in emails, hackers take advantage of this and use links and attachments to infected websites and other installers known as malware. These links are also used in images. You also need to protect against phishing PDF as these links can also be embedded in a PDF that a spam filter cannot scan.
What is the Impact of a Phishing Attack?
The impact can be devastating to a business or an individual. Cybercriminals can get unauthorized access to computer systems, accounts, and other networks, theft of data, sensitive information, destruction of property, failure of systems and many other things.
The effects of a phishing attack is not readily seen. This makes a phishing attack dangerous as hackers can move around in a network and gain access to even more sensitive information and this can lead to theft and extortion. This puts a strain on organization as users have a hard time trusting a business which has had a phishing attack carried out on them. You can look at this stop phishing guide and get more pointers on the impact of phishing attacks.
How To Protect Your Business from Phishing?
Even if you are well versed in catching these emails from cybercriminals, some will be so well-made that even someone who had training will have trouble recognizing a phishing email. This is why you need some options to stop these attacks in their tracks even if you are scammed. These are some tips for effective phishing email protection.
Spam Filters
Effective spam filtering can help shut down poorly made spam emails and other unwanted content. Spam filters are an effective phishing attack prevention method that can verify how authentic the sender is and stop the email before it enters your inbox.
Using a spam filter may not always guarantee that you won’t receive any malicious emails, however, they can help with email phishing protection.
Antivirus Software
An up-to date antivirus software is essential for phishing scams prevention. Good antivirus software can help protect your business and help you protect from major dangerous threats. Antivirus software comes equipped with anti-phishing capabilities and scans all your emails for malicious links and attachments.
User Education
An important measure of phishing scams protection is to provide user education to your employees. It is the first step of a phishing attack and stopping the attack in the first step is crucial to save your data.
To Sum it Up
We hope this article helped you know what is phishing and how it can affect your business. We recommend you get protection from phishing with phishprotection.com and keep your business safe from the threats of phishing attacks.