Spear Phishing Prevention: What You Need to Know

By taking good spear phishing prevention steps, you can deter cybercriminals from stealing trade secrets. Find out how by reading this article.

With 95% of enterprise security breaches resulting from spear phishing, your organization can’t afford not to take measures against cybercriminals.

Although you may be tempted to install only antivirus and stop there, that’s simply not enough to ward off spear phishing attacks. Here, we discuss some key details and how you can implement spear phishing prevention for added security.

 

spear phishing protection

Spear-phishing attacks: why they are successful and how to stop them

First things first: what is spear phishing? It’s very similar to phishing, where cybercriminals scam people and steal their credentials by faking, or spoofing, emails and domain names.

But in spear phishing, instead of casting a “net” (fake email sent to a large number of people), they target specific people or businesses. These attacks are successful because the scammers gather details on their victims to be highly convincing in their emails.

Anyone can be victims of spear phishing

You may think it’s easy to spot spear phishing attacks. But the truth is, most people can’t, including professionals. In a survey, 97% of the respondents couldn’t correctly identify spear phishing emails.

When you consider this statistic and the fact that one misclick is all it takes for an attack to be successful, it’s vital for you to have robust software to pinpoint and block phishing attacks.

Be careful of phishing blogs

Some blog posts may look ordinary, but can actually have plenty of malicious links embedded within them. Stay vigilant and always check the links before clicking by hovering your cursor over them.

If you run a blog, you’ll also want to be on the lookout for fake emails asking you to update your account. These will contain malicious links as well.

 

Spear phishing best practices

There are a few spear phishing best practices you can implement that’ll make a noticeable difference in your workplace’s digital security. Here are a few tips you can follow to increase spear phishing protection immediately.

How to prevent phishing in your workplace

When it comes to how to prevent phishing, the best strategy is to have not just one form of protection. Your antivirus program can be the best in the world, but without a safety net behind it, it makes your organization highly vulnerable to spear phishing attacks.

The more layers you have to your cybersecurity strategy, the better the chances of catching any attempts that make it through one or more of your layers.

 

spear phishing protection

 

Phishing education is important

Many people aren’t able to recognize spear phishing emails because they don’t know the warning signs. This is why it’s essential to have regular phishing education at your workplace. Some key things that indicate you’ve received a spear phishing email are:

  • Mistakes in spelling and grammar: These are made intentionally to prey on those who are unaware of phishing attacks. Legitimate emails from professionals should be relatively free of errors.
  • Generic salutation: This happens more often in phishing, but can occur in spear phishing as well. You won’t be addressed by your name. Instead, it’ll say something like “Hi, email user.”
  • Unexpected links and attachments: These will be hidden in requests for you to confirm reactivation of accounts or appointments/meetings. If you receive such requests, it’s best to type in the domain name yourself.

 

Get the best phishing protection possible

Knowing how spear phishing attacks look like is highly beneficial to your workplace. But that alone isn’t enough to prevent an attack from breaching your defenses. Again, you have to use multiple methods to be successful in warding off cybercriminals.

So in addition to your antivirus program, you should also get phishing protection software. When coupled, these pieces of software can complement one another. Whatever bypasses your antivirus will definitely be caught by your anti-phishing software.

Plus, it’ll also provide real-time protection for your email and internet browsing. No matter who’s using your devices, you can rest easy knowing that any misclicks will be immediately recognized and dealt with.

 

Protect yourself with our spear phishing advice

Many enterprise security breaches are happening daily, so make sure your business won’t be facing one of them. With proper workplace phishing education, robust antivirus program, and superior anti-phishing software, you’ll have the best phishing protection available. You’ll have at least three layers of security to block out spear phishing attacks.

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