What is Phishing?
According to a statistic, nearly 3.4 billion spam emails are being sent every day, making phishing one of the most prevalent cyberattacks today. In this cyberattack technique, the attacker sends fraudulent emails and messages to the victims.
These attacks aim at tricking users into sharing their personal and sensitive business data, such as usernames, passwords, bank and credit card details, etc. Phishing derives its name from ‘fishing’ because attackers ‘bait’ victims using deceptive messages to trick them into revealing sensitive information.
Understanding How Phishing Attacks Work
Every phishing attack starts with a malicious message sent by the attacker across multiple communication channels such as emails, social media, etc. These messages are curated carefully to make them look genuine and that they have been sent by a trusted sender.
Once the victim receives the message and sees it’s from a known contact, they click on the suspicious link in the message. When a victim interacts with the phishing message—such as clicking a malicious link or downloading an attachment—it can result in malware installation, credential theft, or financial fraud.
Different Types of Phishing Attacks
There are various types of phishing techniques that attackers are exploiting today. Learn more about some of these types below.
- Email Phishing
- Spear Phishing
- Whale Phishing
- Smishing Phishing
As the name suggests, email phishing is when an attacker sends spam emails to a bulk of users at once. In this, the email seems to be from a legitimate source, which tempts at least a chunk of users to open that email and fall for this cyberattack.
In this type of phishing attack, fraudulent messages are sent to a very specific group. Spear phishing includes curating a targeted message that aims to draw out a particular group of victims, making emails more personal and the attack more deceptive.
A whale phishing attack is quite like spear phishing. However, in this attack, the group of victims are usually executive-level people with more sensitive and prominent information for the attacker to steal.
Also known as SMS phishing, smishing is when an attacker sends malicious messages via SMS from a mobile device to the victim’s mobile. This attack focuses on luring victims into clicking on a link that gives hackers access to the victim’s personal information.
How to Prevent a Phishing Attack?
Phishing attacks are becoming more prominent by the day, and if you want to protect yourself from this, keep the following prevention strategies in mind.
- Use Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
- Leverage Anti-Phishing Tools
- Awareness Training
Multi-factor authentication adds an extra layer of verification that ensures that only legitimate users can gain access to your data. Even if an attacker steals a password, MFA requires a second authentication factor, such as a one-time code, making unauthorized access much harder.
Many companies across the globe are already using anti-phishing tools to mitigate the risk of this attack. These tools help identify suspicious emails and block them in advance to prevent them from reaching out to you and tempting you to click on malicious links.
Make sure you are also conducting regular security training to educate yourself and your team on how phishing attacks work. Regular awareness training can ensure that your employees can identify any malicious emails or activities and report them.