With 83% of organisations reporting to have experienced a phishing attack last year, phishing has become one of the most common (and most expensive) cyber attack vectors to contend with.
Partially, this is due to the startling number of companies which overlook implementing adequate phishing protection processes.
So, what can you do to defend yourself from the different phishing techniques cyber criminals implement against companies?
To avoid your organisation becoming one of the 83% of phishing victims, we suggest you implement these three pillars of protection to defend your business from phishing attacks.
The Three Pillars of Phishing Protection
Defence Software
Whichever email system your company uses, we recommend Microsoft 365 (Exchange Online), it will require extra protection to combat phishing attacks.
A robust email filtering system can identify scam emails and stop phishing attacks ever reaching yours or your employees inboxes.
Microsoft 365 has its own additional email defence system, suitably named Microsoft Defender. For a small monthly fee Microsoft Defender can protect your emails against advanced attacks.
Highly proficient third-party products such as Mimecast, Barracuda and Email-Laundry, are also available. All of which are designed to intercept scam emails.
Given the potentially devastating costs of a successful phishing attack, defence software is well worth investing in.
Education
Implementing an email filtering system is a good place to start, but with an average of 15 billion spam emails in circulation each day, these software are working overtime, giving opportunity for malicious phishing attacks to slip through from time to time.
For this reason, it is important to keep your employees informed on the dangers of phishing and familiarise them with the different techniques that scammers use. Providing your employees with cyber security awareness training is the second pillar of defence.
Integrated training vendors, such as KnowBe4, provide automated training campaigns and can even simulate phishing attacks for employees to learn from.
Investing in developing an educated workforce is perhaps the most important way to protect your business from phishing attacks. Ensuring that, in the event that defensive software falls short, your employees understand what to look out for and the appropriate actions to take.
Multi Factor Authentication (MFA)
The final step we recommend to protect your business from phishing attacks is to implement a multi-factor authentication system.
A multi-factor authentication (MFA) system is a ‘signing in’ method, which requires multiple levels of verifications before allowing access to an account or application.
With an MFA system in place, even if a phishing scammer obtains sensitive information, such as employee passwords, they will still need to pass through an additional layer of security to gain access.
Implementing an MFA system, such as that provided by Duo Security, could prove to be a vital final layer of protection against phishing scammers.
If implemented correctly, these three pillars of protection from phishing attacks will provide your company with the best chance possible to avoid becoming another victim of this growing cyber threat.
It is important to understand, however, that even with these processes in place, complete protection cannot be 100% guaranteed. It is therefore of equal importance that robust recovery preparation systems are in place.
