Even though it seems like phishing has been around for such a long time that everyone should already know how to identify phishing emails and avoid being phished, but these scam attacks evolve rapidly and continuously, so the danger of you or one your employees getting successfully phishes is higher than ever. In fact, about 23 percent of all phishing emails are opened AFTER employees receive cybersecurity training that covers phishing. It’s terrifying to think that before this training the figure is much closer to 100 percent. Phishing scams can have devastating consequences for your company but there are a few things you can do to protect your business.
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How to avoid phishing attacks?
Train your employees to recognize phishing attacks
Cybersecurity training should be your company’s first line of defense against phishing. The most effective way to conduct this training is to hire a cybersecurity company. At Hackcontrol we test your employees with simulated phishing attacks and provide comprehensive training for employees to help them recognize and prevent phishing scams. Here are some of the signs that an email is fraudulent: it has mistakes in spelling and grammar, or it requests your private information, bank account or credit card details, login information, etc. If you’ve received an unexpected email from an online retailer or, for example, a shipping company, and it has a link, hover your mouse over the link to see the address of the website the link leads too and double-check that it is a legit address without mistakes in spelling, as often scammers will use a fraudulent domain that differs from the real thing by just one letter.
Use an email authentication service
The next step should be using a Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance system or DMARC. There are many different DMARCs available on the market but the general job of this system is to scan your employees’ emails and remove phishing threats even before your employee has a chance to receive them.
Use strong passwords and encrypt them
According to recent surverys, a lot of people are still using very simple passwords like “Password”, “12345678”, or the employee’s name, date of birth, etc. To prevent these simple passwords from causing the downfall of your company it’s best to have your IT department assign passwords to your employees. Another cruvial step is password emcryption – all the passwords stored in your system should be encrypted so if hackers get access to it, they wouldn’t be able to just read out all the passwords for all accounts in the system.
