Phishing is pervasive in the online realm: we’ll explain how to protect your business from it.
Don’t Wishy for a Phishy: What is Phishing and How It Threatens Your Brand?
Phishing is probably the most popular way to trick people into giving their sensitive data away. It’s a portmanteau term that perfectly describes the nature of the threat: private info gets fished out of the unsuspecting victims. And instead of a fishing rod malicious actors employ social engineering — a bunch of tactics that help worming oneself into your trust.
We’ll elucidate more about how phishing is done, how it can harm you, and which steps can help avoid it: supporting customer awareness, bidding on trademarked keywords, and so on.
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Phishing: Tough Facts
Stats about phishing look scary. It is estimated that there are 3 billion phishing emails sent every day and a portion of these might be targeting your customers right this second.
But the attack can assume various forms. So here are the most common ways that fraudsters use to ‘go phishing’:
- Email attack
This is the number one scenario. They disguise an email to look exactly like corporate correspondence: it can be a fake business letter, a thank you message to your clientele, and so forth. While the email’s ‘facade’ copies the brand’s aesthetics, its content can be poisoned with phishing links.
Upon clicking on that link, a victim gets redirected to a web-trap where they will be incentivized to leave their personal data like the bank card details. In other cases a letter is ‘charged’ with a harmful exe-attachment, which can nick the log-in/password data.
- Spear phishing
This is a customized attack aimed at a specific person, a regional CEO or a VIP-client for example. Scammers carefully design a message, as it shouldn’t provoke any suspicion. Usually, spear phishing takes a lot of preparation and the victim is intensely studied before it’s launched.
- DNS phishing
Cybersquatting or typosquatting are used by scammers to trick people into thinking that it’s your website they are browsing right now. This ploy is achievable via making a URL-address look like yours, only modified with typoes or special symbols. In other cases they can simply take your brand’s name and re-register it on a new domain.
- Vishing
According to Antispoofing Wiki vishing is the most successful attack type. The idea is to copy someone’s voice — with impersonation or deep learning — and simply make a call pretending to be that person. The damages caused by vishing are already worth tens of millions.
- SMS attacks
It’s basically the same as phishing through emails, only harmful links are hidden in the SMS.
The Dreadful Impact
The concept of phishing is as dumb as a dumbbell, yet a caboodle of people still fall for it. According to ICO, in 2022 there were 300,497 victims of phishing, worldwide. Enterprises are especially at gunpoint here: there’s a whole myriad of negative consequences they risk facing if some baddies manage to impersonate them successfully.
Here’s what’s threatening your brand:
- Reputational loss. Customers will be disappointed if they get duped under a familiar guise that they trust. Even knowing that you’re innocent, they will question your security approach. Plus, your logo will evoke negative feelings instinctively.
- Money loss. The customer’s financial losses = your losses. Odds are, they won’t return to buy your stuff ever again, not to mention possible legal costs.
- Work disruption. Successful phishing attacks can severely disrupt a brand’s day-to-day activities. For example, a data breach caused by such an attack may result in system downtime, data loss, and significant expenses to resolve the issue.
- Legal problems. A company failing to protect sensitive data will at some point be a target of legal scrutiny, which can include investigations and hefty fines.
What’s even worse, all of these problems may pile up like a snowball and strike a brand cumulatively.
How to Prevent Phishing Attacks
Here are some safe methods that can fortify your brand against the threat:
- Raise the awareness
This applies both to your customers and employees. The clients should be warned that, for example, you would never request a certain type of data or promise some bonanza of a bonus that’d make them instantly rich if they tap some shady link.
The employees should be trained to detect phishing and report it on spot — it can save a lot of trouble for the company. Besides, it’s essential to teach about new, rising threats like vishing — technology-driven attacks are what throws people off guard best.
- Employ anti-scam solution
There’s a great protocol dubbed DMARC — it’s used to confirm the legitimacy of the email sender. In other words, if you have that defence barrier up and running, the spoofers will have a hard time pretending to be you: their emails will go straight to the spam folder.
Another must-have is the Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). This is quite helpful if your clientele are offered to register online accounts: even if a phishing operation was a success, malicious actors won’t make it though MFA as it requires biometric and other confirmation.
- Monitoring
Make sure to check social media and web-space to find and take down all the clones disguising as you. Bid on the keywords, so no one can use your name to promote themselves in the Google search, report unauthorized accounts, and warn your customers about fake outlets.
Plenty of Phish in the Sea
Even though phishing isn’t going anywhere, you have every chance to shield your brand from it. Follow our tips, stay alert, and don’t hesitate to take action. And of course, stay tuned to learn about corporate cybersecurity!
