The
dawn of digital transformation has taken the internet by storm with the growing
number and sophistication of phishing scams. Long back in 1996, phishing scams
involved fooling people through messages pretending to be the authentic source.
People those days fell prey to such scams and shared their account details and
billing information. Though the strategies have become outdated today and we
believe we can’t be fooled with such techniques, Phishing remains as popular as
ever.
Over
the years, Phishing has transformed drastically from simple messaging to spooky
emails. There is no end to the rising number of phishing scams through emails
with fake IDs, driving to the malicious website that appears to be similar to
the one it is imitating. The hackers are sneaking into your email conversations
with previously compromised email accounts, replying to your mail threads with
malicious links or attachments trying to acquire confidential information of
your company.
With
time the threat actors are turning out to be more precisewith their target
audience. Spear Phishing targets known individuals to
lure them, observing their online activities and imitating the websites they
are accessing. Whaling is more precise, which targets executives at higher
positions. Both techniques involve a huge amount of research and observation to
entice the targets to open the fraudulent emails. There is a thin line of
difference between Spear Phishing and Whaling. Spear Phishing is used to target
an individual while Whaling targets an organization’s top level executives. Scammers
popularly use whaling to acquire the organization’s valuable information which
comprises of trade secrets and passwords credentials to administrative company
accounts.
Though
the digital era demands the use of advanced technologies like IoT, AI, Cloud
Computing; security becomes a major concern here. In the present scenario,
while we all are working in the extended perimeters of our homes, no one wants
to fall prey to phishing scams.
Let’s
have a look at the preventive measures to be taken to secure your organization’s
online presence from phishing scams.
1. Build a Cybersecurity Awareness Training
Program:
The organizations Cyber security is as
strong as the weakest employee of the company. A security breach is likely to
occur due to human negligence rather than cyber-attack. Conduct Cyber security
awareness training program and educate your employees about the phishing trends
and tactics to spot them. The training session will ensure use of approved
software and strong passwords in the organization. Enlighten the employees on
the Cyber security strategies and multi-factor authentication to protect the
business data from top 10 OWASP vulnerabilities.
2. Install an Anti-Phishing Toolbar:
According
to experts, 97% of Internet consumers within an organization fail to identify
sophisticated phishing emails. Deploying anti-phishing tool is a comprehensive anti-phishing
solution that delivers detailed information of the website you are browsing on
the internet preventing such scams. The toolbar secures your business
information with routine checks of the visited sites comparing them with the
known phishing sites in their database.
While
browsing through the internet, if the user accidentally lands to a malicious
site, the toolbar sets an alert.
These
toolbars are offered by most of the popular browsers with no extra cost. To
secure your organization’s confidential information, the decision makers should
install the anti-phishing toolbar to keep a track of your website security. It
verifies the email content, attached files, and other information securing your
online presence from web spoofing or phishing.
ESDSVTMScan is a vulnerability scanning tool regularly notifying you of the
security lapse, thus Securing your organization from a security breach.
1. Use Web Application Firewalls:
The
web application firewalls act as a barrier to phishing scams. Most of the
organizations use Web Application Firewall as a defense tool between their
business website and the internet traffic, safeguarding the online presence against
malicious intruders. The internet traffic consists of malicious requests which
might be spoofed emails, messages, requests from fraudulent websites. So,
deploying a WAF secures your online presence from these Cyber security attacks
and malicious actors.
This
indispensable part of the web application security strategy identifies and
patches the vulnerabilities in applications and servers, blocking malicious
actors from finding these loopholes. ESDS eNlight WAF is a specially
engineered intelligent Cloud Hosted Web Application Firewall that protects your
web applications from threats/attacks. Protect your online presence against
these spoofed requests with ESDS eNlight WAF.
1. Detect Potential Threats with AI and ML:
With
sophistication of cyber threats, Cyber security is also evolving at a rapid
pace. AI and ML can analyze the user behavior and proactively detect the
threats thus assisting your organization in Cyber security war. The advanced
technology solutions like AI and ML trace the anomalies and warning signals for
phishing throughout the email. AI examines the email message based on the
context comparing it with previous phishing scams.
2. Endpoint Monitoring and Protection:
No doubt
at workplace employees tends to make use of their personal devices. The rising use
of these devices introduces a number of fresh endpoints which need to be
protected under IT security system. At workplace there are certain devices with
compromised security, monitoring and protecting them becomes a crucial task.
Monitor such endpoints and offer remediation for compromised devices to prevent
the explosion of attack through these unmanaged devices.
Wrap Up
The dawn
of the digital era has taken the internet by storm with the rising number of
Internet consumers and sophistication of phishing scams. The scammers are
innovating unique strategies to sneak into your email conversation and India
ranks 3rd after Canada and the United States for Phishing scams. The
above-mentioned techniques will help you secure online presence of your
organization from Phishing Scams.
Companies
like ESDS – The Digital Transformation
Catalyst are finding new ways to defend your online presence with the help
of advanced technological solutions to fight against the sophisticated
scammers. ESDS eNlight WAF, ESDS eNlight WebVPN, and VTMScan are the Made in India security tools to guard
your online presence.
For
further queries, you can connect to us at getintouch@esds.co.in
| 1800 209 3006
