October marks Cyber Security Awareness Month, an ideal time to strengthen your digital defences. With online threats on the rise—phishing being one of the most widespread—staying informed is key to keeping your data secure.
What are Phishing Emails?
Phishing is a form of cyber attack that can manipulate users into divulging sensitive information, often resulting in loss, or a position of compromise for the individual or organisation.
Phishing emails are often sent as structured emails purporting to be from a trusted (and familiar) source, such as an official organisation, market leading brand or financial organisation such as a bank or investment provider.
How does Phishing work?
Phishing often involves at least three stages to benefit the criminal.
They are as follows:
- Fraudulent communication: Communication impersonating a person or organisation of trust to the potential ‘victim’.
- Malicious links/attachments: The communication will encourage the reader to input personal or secure information via links or attachments.
- Data capture: Information is then captured by the cyber criminal and used for their benefit to gain access to information or services not intended for them.
What happens next?
From an individual perspective, Identity Theft is a common result of a phishing campaign that has successfully collected personal data from the intended recipient. This can have a lengthy and costly outcome for the victim. Victims often have key information such as passwords or secure codes stolen and used for the gain of unknown cyber criminals.
How can I become more aware of Phishing tactics?
Phishing emails and campaigns have become more sophisticated over recent years, as multiple tactics have been tested and used, to varying success, by cyber criminals. With potential financial, security and reputational losses at stake to individuals and organisations it is more important than ever before to remain vigilant and aware.
The need to be informed about, and aware of the potential for risk, really is prominent in our online-first world. You can remain educated and ‘up to date’ around frequent phishing tactics by visiting the NCSC website.
Additionally, Cyber Essentials, a relevant IT security scheme, may be of interest to you and your organisation. Cyber Essentials is an effective, Government backed scheme that will help you to protect your organisation, You can find out more about Cyber Essentials on this website.
Additionally, you can read more about Cyber Essentials below.
As a team, we stay up to date with news on the latest phishing tactics and campaigns in order for us to best support our customers in protecting themselves against Phishing. You can rely on us to stay informed on this prominent issue and provide IT solutions that you can trust.
Our IT security services can reduce the chance of you falling victim to Phishing attacks by enforcing advanced account security measures and sophisticated email filtering to stop suspected phishing emails before they reach your users. Phishing Simulation is also another value solution to test the knowledge and understanding of your employees and how they react to suspicious emails. Users that are identified as being vulnerable, can then be provided with training on how to identify and avoid Phishing emails. We can also offer Vulnerability Scanning for your networks and machines to look at any potential risks against known vulnerabilities which we can then action and remediate to ensure your data is at less risk.
If you have questions about how to improve data security, you would like to discuss a possible data security audit or gain expert advice on how your existing networks could be made more secure, please give us a call on 01295 533977.
