When you think of phishing, do you think of Nigerian princes scamming you for money by email? If so, you haven’t been paying attention to what phishing attempts cybercriminals have been cooking up lately. Sophisticated phishing emails now employ social engineering tactics, like spear phishing messages, with designs and logos that your employees have come to trust. Thinking you’ve been contacted by a legitimate company like your bank or a client, cybercriminals can lull individuals into a false sense of security, leading them to reveal personal information like account numbers, credit card numbers, passwords, and network credentials.
Once this private data has been revealed, you may be opening your network to unauthorized backdoor access without realizing it until it’s too late. From there, cybercriminals can launch further phishing campaigns and even ransomware attacks to further exploit your network vulnerabilities. Our team believes that the first step to protecting your network is education. Educate yourself and your employees to stop cybercriminals in their tracks.
Protecting Your Network
If your business is serious about staying protected against spear phishing attackers and phishing scams, here are three steps you can take to stay ahead of cybercriminals.
EDUCATE
Again, the first step to protect your network is to educate everyone who uses your network. Your MSP likely provides supplemental training designed to help your team recognize the telltale characteristics of phishing attempts. Make sure your employees know who to report phishing attempts to if they suspect an email of being fraudulent or deceiving. Your employees should be your network’s first line of defense. If your employees can recognize a fraudulent email for what it is, you won’t have to worry about whether or not your other security measures will protect you.
UPDATE
Keeping your network up to date is critical to staying protected in the event that cybercriminals compromise your network. By ensuring your system is up to date, you can mitigate the potential damage that cybercriminals can do to your network if they gain unauthorized access or confidential data. At the same time, regularly updating your system ensures that it’s running at optimal speeds.
Implement
Once you’ve educated and updated, now it’s time to implement safeguards and backup measures that provide additional layers of protection. You can install second chance programs on your email systems that give your employees a second chance to abort if they click on an external link without thinking. Many phishing attempts rely on our instinct to automatically click on a link without considering the source. A second click solution protects against this common error. Another option includes URL checking systems that allow you to check the legitimacy and credibility of a website before navigating to it.
If your business is ready to take your network’s defenses to the next level, contact the security experts at Reverus today.
