The Phishing Nightmare and What You Need to Do About It

Phishing is the most widespread attack vector for modern day hackers. They are continuously evolving, getting more and more sophisticated, and therefore more dangerous. In this month’s newsletter, we are going to go through what makes a phishing attack and how to give your organization the best chance at keeping them from being a major problem for your business. 

How Phishing Starts

Scammers will fashion and send out a lot of messages; mostly aimed at being convincing enough in their message to get recipients to interact with the message. Phishing isn’t a problem that is exclusive to email, but the vast majority of phishing attacks are carried out via email, so we will be focusing on this avenue of attack. 

The first thing you need to understand is that email attacks are getting more and more sophisticated. They will target individuals with information about them that they are expected to see when they open an email. In order to successfully scam someone into getting them to provide enough information to get into their accounts, hackers have to come up with a good story. 

This is where it is important to know what to look for when it comes to phishing emails. When your boss sends you an email demanding that you immediately undertake an action, a large percentage of people are going to do the task (and hope to do it satisfactorily). This is exactly the type of thing that these scammers count on. They will masquerade as a manager or other decision maker that demands immediate attention to a situation that is completely contrived in order to get a person to take impulsive action and share too much information with the sender. 

This subterfuge can be exceedingly well crafted. In fact, some of the more sophisticated attacks look just like official correspondence and are more veiled in their direction than most of the phishing attacks that we encounter. These well-crafted scams would be hard for a regular person with no training to not get scammed by.

You Need to Train Your Staff

You invest heavily in training for a lot of other things. Some things are mandated by government regulations, some are dictated by industry. Sometimes, your processes need more context and need people with knowledge to mentor new employees. One thing is for certain, however, nowadays you need to ensure that your employees are well trained and ready to confront the phishing menace. 

Let’s go through some tips on how to properly train your employees to identify phishing attacks.

Have a Training Platform

Since it’s such a massive problem for businesses and other organizations, there are a lot of third-party security training products out there that you can set up inside your business and will give them a tutorial about how to identify phishing emails with information that includes:

How Phishing Works

Identifying fraudulent emails isn’t always so easy. This is why each employee that works in your business should have a solid foundation of knowledge about how phishing actually works and what the dangers are. One of the most effective ways to get anyone to understand the urgency of the situation is to outline the possible scenarios should they fall victim to a phishing attack. 

Elements of Concern

Every phishing email is fraudulent and illegitimate. Therefore, every phishing email has some tells that it is in fact illegitimate. While some attacks are more sophisticated than others, a comprehensive phishing training platform will provide staff with everything they need to look out for. 

The Vast Array of Different Methods

There are many different forms that phishing can come in. Every single attack vector can produce the same effect though: unauthorized access that results in unenviable situations for your business.  

Test, Test, Test

The best part of these platforms is that they often have integrated quizzes and other options that can really put your staff’s phishing knowledge to use. Whether it be mock phishing attacks designed to test workers or actual tests that they have to pass in order to get certified, a phishing training platform can quickly provide your whole team with the knowledge and feedback they need to be more effective pawns in your game of chess with cyberattackers. 

At k_Street Consulting, LLC, we take cybersecurity extremely seriously and know that every business should do the same. If you are interested in getting our help to train your staff or be pointed in the direction of training platforms that really work to help secure your business, give us a call today at (202) 640-2737.