Insights

91% of breaches occur through stolen credentials…

What is a Phishing Scam?

Phishing scams are what hackers use to attempt to steal network credentials to ultimately gain access to your company’s data & network.

These types of hackers usually make contact via email and will mimic reputable entities such as banks, e-mail and cloud data storage companies, etc – and lead the recipient to a ‘poisonous’ page. They use clever tactics to fool the victim, disguising themselves as a trustworthy source, making it hard to identify whether they are legitimate or not.

Phishing scams are the most successful form of hacking and acquiring private information, accounting for approximately 91% of all successful cyber-attacks. Phishers have long imitated major service providers like Microsoft and PayPal which are the two most common for phishing attacks. Hackers predominantly try to steal access to Microsoft 365 accounts because that provides onward access to e-mail and company data.

One of the most recent and fatal phishing attacks was one impersonating Microsoft, this was sent via an audio file in an email that appeared to be a missed call, however, to access the full audio it redirected users to a ‘Microsoft Office Login’ page which appeared to be genuine and it required the users credentials.

There has also been a rise in phishing ransomware attacks, which centres around the practise of digital blackmail. Ransomware is a software that is downloaded or installed on a device, and this could be sent via a phishing email. Once it has been downloaded or installed they then hold the victim ransom, asking them to pay a big fee in exchange for the return of stolen data, personal information or the corporate network. This is the most vicious form of attack to a business.

A recent phishing ransomware attack targeted healthcare and education organisations by an email impersonating their in-house IT managers, attached to this was a customised Microsoft Word document that spread the malware through the network. The attachment contained the logo of the hospital or the school it was sent to on the header and records, making it seem legitimate.

How to Avoid a Phishing Attack

  • Get your IT supplier to add a banner to all incoming mail so you know it came from an external source and can’t be fooled by imitated internal e-mails.
  • Check the email domain to see where the e-mail came from, and register similar and misspellings of your company’s domain names to prevent impersonation – e.g. raz0rblue.com or razorblue.co
  • Ensure your employees know who the business has accounts with and don’t open e-mails from any untrusted or unknown suppliers.
  • Have different passwords for everything – If you have fell victim to a phishing attack and have the same password for all of your accounts, work, online banking, social media – this gives hackers the opportunity to access every account within minutes.
  • Use Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) – this provides your accounts and business with a second layer of security, if a phisher manages to steal a password, they will need to authenticate on their phone or with a token which is physically in their possession.

To guarantee full protection of your organisation we recommend having a fully fit email security system which includes antivirus, continuity, scanning and archiving. It should be able to do the following, to keep your business fully secure:

  • Protect against malware-less email attacks seeking to impersonate trusted senders.
  • Scanning of all inbound emails to attack domain similarities, sender impersonation, header abnormalities and suspicious email content.
  • Identify sensitive data attempting to leave the organisation.
  • Monitor and detect the movement of threats via email internally.
  • Automate the removal of both internal and external emails that are determined to contain threats or sensitive data.
  • Continuously checking files to uncover and mitigate any previously unidentified malware post-delivery.
  • Archive email system that eliminates data loss and can automate the quick recovery of important emails and data that could have been lost/ impacted by hackers.

Need More Help?

razorblue offers leading email-security protection which provides businesses against all external and internal email threats that safeguard your business against phishing attacks, as well as anti-virus/ anti-spam, email continuity, email security and email archiving.

If you need more help, or want to learn more on this, get in touch and a member of our team will be happy to help.

Tel: 0333 3446 344
Email: sales@razorblue.com