In a digital world where 4.03 billion people worldwide have active email accounts, it’s safe to say that it has become an essential communication tool — from heavy-hitters like Gmail dominating 61 percent of millennials and 54 percent of Generation X, while Yahoo and Outlook follow closely behind.
Whatever platform your business uses to communicate, keep in mind that your sensitive data may be at risk with the rising number of cyberattacks plaguing the worldwide web. In that regard, one of the most common security complications that can threaten your employees includes phishing attacks.
Phishers have plenty of malicious tricks up their sleeves, so letting your business familiarise itself with some of their go-to techniques can help you create better cybersecurity measures to protect your company from falling into one of these scams:
1. Deceptive Phishing
It’s hard to trick a professional into giving up critical information, but phishers know how to mask their fraud attempts by mimicking a legitimate company, person, organisation, or anyone with authority. They often facilitate a sense of urgency to prompt victims to follow their direction by using the following tricks:
- Using legitimate links;
- Blending malicious and benign code;
- Modifying brand logos to look credible;
- Using shortened links and redirecting to a phishing landing page;
2. Spear Phishing
The technique above largely depends on a “spray and pray” approach, but there’s more deliberate communication and strategy behind spear phishing. Instead of just sending emails, phishers spearhead the attack by impersonating a person with credible status to trick the reader into believing they have a possible connection.
You’ll likely find spear phishing in social media sites like LinkedIn since phishers like to gather data from the victim such as their name, place of employment, job title, and email address. As for the malicious link, it often comes in the form of the following:
- Malicious documents on cloud services like Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.;
- Compromised API tokens;
3. Whaling Attacks
Whaling poses the most danger to any organisation since attackers using this technique often frauds persons of high standing in your company, such as executives. Once they can harpoon a legitimate account and compromise it, they can launch a business email compromise (BEC) to use the abused email account to conduct phishing attacks, ransomware, infiltrate the network, and more.
Seeing as whaling attacks can put the entire organisation at risk, including their supply chain details, it’s the kind of attack that can cost the life of the business itself.
The Bottom Line: Getting to Know Different Phishing Attacks
Beyond limitless opportunities, the digital landscape is also rife with phishers who abuse email accounts, social media, and other online channels to trick victims into giving up their information.
Knowing what to look for so you can easily spot a suspicious email a mile away can help boost your defenses against cyberattacks, but it’s better to integrate dedicated cybersecurity to truly protect your business in the long run.
If you want to secure your network and software against potential scammers, thieves, and other forms of cybercrime, we can protect your business from the damaging effects of online piracy and counterfeiting.
Our company offers advanced threat intelligence that can simplify your cyber analysis in more ways than one – from cyberattack prevention, anti-piracy solutions, and more. Get in touch with us today and see how we can guarantee your virtual safety.