According to Cofense, on February 11, only 1 in 11 users could report malicious emails, and 82% of them took up to an hour to identify a phishing email. Such incident is inadvertent because cyber threats are evolving daily, and hackers could circumvent advanced security to target human weakest links. Cybercriminals take advantage of this in phishing attacks, which have become even more common and effective with the growth of cloud-based email or remote office users.
What is Phishing?
It is often much easier to convince an employee that they need to take action by sending a payment to a vendor than to identify and exploit a vulnerability in a company’s systems. A phishing email is a tactic to adopt social engineering to exploit your organization’s employees. Suppose an attacker can get a user to click on a malicious link or open an infected attachment. In that case, they can steal login credentials and other personal data or install malware on the employee’s computer. From there, the cybercriminal can expand their access on the corporate network to steal sensitive data or perform other attacks.
Why Phishing works?
Over 90% of cyberattacks begin with phishing emails due to their effectiveness. It is often much easier to convince an employee that they need to take action by sending a payment to a vendor than to identify and exploit a vulnerability in a company’s systems. A phishing email is a tactic to adopt social engineering to exploit your organization’s employees. Suppose an attacker can get a user to click on a malicious link or open an infected attachment. In that case, they can steal login credentials and other personal data or install malware on the employee’s computer. From there, the cybercriminal can expand their access on the corporate network to steal sensitive data or perform other attacks.
How to prevent phishing?
The best way is to educate your employee to learn how to spot phishing emails. It usually starts with a look like a real live phishing website, masquerading as a PayPal login or Cathay Pacific Airline survey form by tempting victims to hand over their credentials.
At Centitech, we offer the client proactive measures to protect the organization, including “sandboxing” inbound email, web traffic inspection, provide employee education whenever a new threat is identified.