What you need to Know to Protect Yourself from Phishing

  

Phishing is a fraudulent attempt to get sensitive information or data by disguising oneself as a trusted friend or acquaintance in electronic communication. Phishing is a cyberattack that uses disguised email as a weapon. The goal is to trick the email receiver into believing that the message is something they want or need — a request from their bank, for instance, or a note from someone in their company, and to click a link or download an attachment. Typically, the attackers look for information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details, 

Phishing is an old attack method. It has been around since the mid-1990s. By analogy with the sport of angling, these Internet scammers were using e-mail lures, setting out hooks to "fish" for passwords and financial data from the "sea" of Internet users. When an offer is attention-grabbing, eye-catching, and too good to be true, you need to take precautions. Look around a little closer. Watch out for little hints such as spelling errors, logo imitations, and the likes. 

In recent times, phishing methods have become more sophisticated. This is due to the availability of various tools and templates. Getting sophisticated ‘fishing gear’ is now much easier and less expensive.

What is a phishing kit?

The availability of phishing kits makes it easy for cybercriminals, even those with low technical skills, to launch phishing campaigns. A phishing kit bundles phishing website resources and tools that only need to be installed on a server. Once installed, all the attacker needs to do is send out emails to potential victims. Phishing kits as well as mailing lists are available on the dark web. A couple of sites, Phishtank and OpenPhish, keep crowd-sourced lists of known phishing kits.

Phishing During Crisis

Criminals rely on deception and creating a sense of urgency to achieve success with their phishing campaigns. Crises such as the coronavirus pandemic give those criminals a big opportunity to lure victims into taking their phishing bait.

During a crisis, people are on edge. They want information and are looking for direction from their employers, the government, and other relevant authorities. An email that appears to be from one of these entities and promises new information or instructs recipients to complete a task quickly will likely receive less scrutiny than prior to the crisis. An impulsive click later, and the victim's device is infected or the account is compromised.

How to Prevent Phishing

There also are a number of steps you can take and mindsets you should get into that will keep you from becoming a phishing statistic, including:

Check the spelling of email links before you enter any sensitive information or click through.

Watch out for URL redirects, where you're sent to a different website with identical design

If you get an email from sources that seem suspicious, try to send a message to the contact with a fresh email.

Be sensitive about the personal information you put on the internet such as dating sites, shopping sites, etc.

Preventing Phishing with Sandboxing 

Sandboxing protects against breaches and data loss from zero-day threats and sophisticated email attacks by providing a powerful environment to run an in-depth, sophisticated analysis of unknown programs and files. This advanced email security layer will provide protection against malware, spear-phishing, advanced persistent threats (APTs), offering insight into new threats, and helping mitigate risks.

Sandboxing safely unpacks suspicious files in a secure environment that mirrors production endpoints. This tricks attackers into believing they have reached their target. Files accessed by end-users are first analyzed with anti-malware technologies. Strong machine learning, static analysis, and behavior detection technologies ensure that only files that require further analysis get sent to the sandbox.

As incidents of breaches continue to increase, it is a good measure to conduct security awareness periodically in organizations. Every organization is only as strong as its weakest link.