What can our organisation do to minimise the risk of phishing attacks?
Minimizing the Risk of Phishing Attacks: 5 Best Practices
Phishing attacks continue to be one of the most successful methods cybercriminals use to infiltrate organizations, steal sensitive data, and cause significant financial damage. These attacks often exploit human behavior and trust to bypass technological safeguards, making them one of the most challenging cybersecurity threats to defend against. However, businesses and individuals can significantly reduce the risk of falling victim to phishing with a multi-layered approach. In this blog, we’ll explore the five best methods to minimize phishing attacks, diving into semi-technical details on how they work and why they are effective.
1. Employee Awareness and Training
The human element is often the weakest link in any security chain, and cybercriminals know it. Phishing attacks are most effective when employees lack awareness of the tactics used by attackers. Therefore, training and education are essential components of any anti-phishing strategy.
Key Components of Effective Training:
Simulated Phishing Exercises: Regularly sending out simulated phishing emails can gauge employees’ ability to spot malicious emails. These exercises are valuable learning tools and help identify employees who need additional training.
Training on Phishing Indicators: Employees should be trained to look for signs of phishing, such as:
- Unfamiliar or spoofed email addresses.
- Requests for sensitive information or urgent action.
- Suspicious links (hovering over a link before clicking to check the actual URL).
- Poor grammar, spelling mistakes, or generic greetings like “Dear Customer.”
Report Mechanisms: Providing employees with a clear and easy process to report suspicious emails to IT or security teams ensures that potential phishing threats are quickly addressed.
By embedding phishing awareness into the organization’s culture, employees can become a strong line of defence instead of a vulnerability.
Most security incidents are caused by a minority of users. By using Human Risk Management technology, Mimecast customers can tailor security training, gain insights into employee behaviours, and proactively address risks, improving overall security and workforce protection.
2. Use Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
Even the most cautious employees can sometimes fall for sophisticated phishing attacks. This is why Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is a crucial additional layer of defence. MFA requires users to provide at least two forms of verification before accessing an account or system, making it far more difficult for attackers to gain access with just a stolen password.
How MFA Works:
MFA typically involves the following types of factors:
– Something You Know (Password): A standard password or PIN.
– Something You Have (Device): A mobile phone for receiving one-time passwords (OTPs) via SMS, email, or a dedicated app like Google Authenticator.
– Something You Are (Biometrics): Fingerprint, facial recognition, or other biometric data.
Why MFA is Effective Against Phishing:
If a phishing attack successfully steals a user’s password, the attacker still won’t have access to the second authentication factor, such as the OTP sent to the user’s mobile device or biometric data. This dramatically reduces the likelihood that compromised credentials will lead to a full breach.
Duo’s MFA product combines multiple factors of authentication to provide robust security that is flexible for users but rigid against threat. The interface provides a fast, non-disruptive and simple authentication experience, helping users focus their time on what matters most.
3. Deploy Email Filtering and Anti-Phishing Tools
The sheer volume of phishing emails sent each day means that some will inevitably slip past human scrutiny. That’s where advanced email filtering and anti-phishing tools come into play. These tools serve as the first line of defence, identifying and blocking phishing emails before they even reach users’ inboxes.
Technical Details of Email Filtering:
Modern email filtering tools utilize a combination of techniques to detect phishing emails:
- Spam Filters: Traditional spam filters are programmed to identify characteristics common in phishing emails, such as suspicious senders or keyword patterns.
- Heuristics and Machine Learning: Anti-phishing tools are becoming increasingly sophisticated, using machine learning algorithms to detect email anomalies, unusual metadata, and subtle indicators of phishing that go beyond simple keyword detection.
- Attachment and Link Scanning: Many phishing emails contain malicious attachments or links. Anti-phishing tools scan links in real-time to identify URLs that redirect to malicious websites or have been flagged for phishing activity.
With these tools, phishing emails can be flagged, quarantined, or blocked before they ever reach employees, significantly reducing the attack surface.
As the top attack vector, email demands the strongest possible protection. Mimecast blocks the most dangerous email-borne attacks, from phishing and ransomware to social engineering, payment fraud, and impersonation. Apply the power of AI, machine learning, and social graphing to make email security smarter.
4. Regular Software Updates and Patching
Phishing attacks are often the starting point for more sophisticated attacks that exploit vulnerabilities in systems, applications, or networks. One of the best defences against these types of attacks is ensuring all software is up-to-date and properly patched.
How Phishing Leads to Exploitation:
A common phishing tactic involves tricking users into downloading malware through email attachments or malicious links. Once installed, malware can exploit unpatched vulnerabilities in systems or software, allowing attackers to:
- Escalate privileges.
- Access sensitive data.
- Move laterally through the network.
The Importance of Regular Patching:
Most cyberattacks, including those initiated by phishing, target known vulnerabilities. Patching is the process of updating software to fix security vulnerabilities, bugs, or other issues identified by vendors. Organizations should:
- Enable Automatic Updates for operating systems, web browsers, and software whenever possible.
- Maintain Patch Management Policies that ensure timely testing and deployment of patches, especially for critical systems.
By closing these vulnerabilities through regular patching, organizations reduce the likelihood that phishing-related malware can compromise their networks.
Take a proactive response to protecting endpoints. With Datto RMM’s patch management feature, Novo3 can deploy the latest patches to secure systems and reduce threat risks 24/7.
5. Implement Domain-Based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC)
A major technique used in phishing attacks is **email spoofing**, where attackers send emails that appear to come from trusted domains. DMARC (Domain-Based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) is an email authentication protocol designed to combat this technique.
How DMARC Works:
DMARC builds upon two existing email authentication protocols — SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail). Here’s how it works:
- SPF (Sender Policy Framework): Ensures that incoming mail from a domain is sent from an IP address authorized by the domain’s administrators.
- DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail): Verifies that an email hasn’t been tampered with during transmission by attaching a digital signature to emails.
DMARC allows domain owners to specify how incoming emails that fail SPF or DKIM checks should be handled—whether they should be blocked, quarantined, or allowed through. Domain owners can also receive reports on emails that failed DMARC checks, enabling them to better monitor and adjust their email authentication policies.
Benefits of DMARC:
By implementing DMARC, organizations can prevent attackers from spoofing their domains, which is one of the most common techniques used in phishing attacks. This helps protect both the organization and its customers from phishing attempts.
Novo3 can setup DMARC policies to reject or quarantine fraudulent emails and provide reporting of unauthorized use of your domain, improving email security and reducing phishing and impersonation attacks.
Phishing attacks remain one of the most effective tools in a cybercriminal’s arsenal, but by combining employee training, MFA, email filtering, regular patching, and DMARC implementation, organizations can significantly reduce their risk. These five methods work together to create a robust defence, addressing both human and technological vulnerabilities that phishing attacks exploit. The key to success is adopting a proactive and multi-layered approach to security that prioritizes both prevention and mitigation of phishing risks.
To learn more about how Novo3 can assist with solutions and expertise to help minimise the rosks of phishing, contact the Novo3 team now.
