BotNet News

Phishing is one of the most common cyber attacks on both individuals and businesses. Attackers often steal sensitive information like passwords, account numbers, Social Security Numbers, and credit card numbers from unsuspecting victims. This information can be used for a variety of malicious purposes including fraud, theft, and identity theft.

A successful phishing attack can be devastating to a business, and is an important reason why cybersecurity needs to take the forefront of operational priorities. High-profile data breaches have taught organizations the hard lesson that they must put more emphasis on preventing phishing attacks.

To combat these attacks, employees should be trained to recognize the indicators of a phishing attack. For example, grammar and spelling errors in an email should be a red flag. Formal email communications from a bank, credit card company, payment service, or the government should not contain grammatical errors and should use proper business English. Another indicator is the way the victim is addressed. Legitimate companies will never address the victim with generic greetings such as “Dear Sir or Madam”.

Additionally, attackers frequently use a sense of urgency to manipulate victims. This can be done by using an email that claims a negative consequence will occur if a response is not received in a short amount of time (e.g., a warning that an account will be deactivated).

In addition to employee training, there are several other preventative actions that an organization can take. For example, passwords should be changed regularly to reduce an attacker’s window of opportunity. Keeping software and firmware up-to-date is another effective prevention measure as developers release updates to fix known vulnerabilities. A firewall can also help prevent malware from entering the network by blocking incoming traffic and logging outgoing requests.