Most hackers rely on phishing attacks to gain access into the systems of companies as well as small to medium sized businesses. As more companies and small businesses continue to increasingly rely on information technology to undertake their core business processes, they become more prone to phishing scams, thus leading to data breaches. These attacks will continue to remain popular with hackers, in large part because they can result in massive financial gains when the attacks are successful. Such attacks may be costly to companies regardless of whether they are financially stable or not.
What is Phishing?
Phishing is one of the many ways in which hackers illegally access or gain information on a certain individual or company. Phishing is not easy because it takes time, patience and planning to pull off. Phishing is a specific type of cybercrime activity that involves a cybercriminal or a group of cybercriminals who act to mimic the actions and behaviors of a company or an organization to lure other people into providing confidential information. Victims comply thinking that they are providing such information to the intended users, instead of providing such information to the cybercriminals.
The information involved may include sensitive passwords, banking information, and personally identifiable information that may be used in the intrusion of the companies systems, breaching of the companies data or transferring money from the company’s accounts to the cyber criminal's accounts.
Further to this point, an article from Proofpoint says that 50% of phishing site addresses now use https, and at the same time, the online payment sector was the most targeted in Q3 2018.
Phishing is one of the oldest methods in cybercrime, though it is still considered a concern in the cyber security world. The reason for this is because most individuals and organizations can still fall for this trick.
There are a variety of types of phishing scams which include those which hand over sensitive information, download malware, engage in spear phishing, as well as those which utilize whale phishing. These phishing types are explained below:
● Phishing attacks that hand over sensitive information – that is, phishing scams involving using messages that aim to trick the user into revealing confidential information such as usernames and passwords.
● Malware scams are mostly used using phishing emails that contain malware that is used to infect the victim's computers with malware.
● Spear phishing involves attackers attempting to craft messages that appeal to specifically targeted people, and are used to spoof addresses for sending emails that look like coworkers have sent them.
● Whale phishing is a specific type of spear phishing aimed at the high authority figures in a company such as the CEO.
You can spot phishing websites, often simply by looking at the URL or link, especially if you are advised to log in to your account. If you think it is suspicious, leave! You can also scan the page for a trust seal to see if the page is real or not. Almost everything in phishing from emails to website URL have strings of suspicious long characters that don’t make sense. 
This is also true for emails. Dangerous ones tend to let you click a link that looks suspicious, because of its long jumbled letters, including special characters.
In terms of voice calls, never give up your information, especially to support calls that you haven’t even requested. This also goes for cold calls that suddenly ask for your information.
How to Report and Prevent Phishing
Sadly there are still people who fall for these tricks, and many are the older demographic of people who are not familiar with these technologies. If you find a suspicious site that prompts you to log in or type your personal information, please call your manager, department head or an IT specialist.
It is therefore very essential for a company to educate its employees on ways to avoid phishing attacks. Be sure to update all your application to their latest security patches and updates. Deploy web filters to block malicious websites and use spam filters. Spam and web filtering are the most critical components in protecting a company from phishing scams.
With the use of outsourced IT services, like those from Ambient I.T. Solutions’ managed services, a company can be protected from phishing attacks through web and spam filtering. This is done effectively through advanced tools, such as the use of the Barracuda spam filtering and a secondary MX host.
The Barracuda spam firewall helps in providing comprehensive email protection from threats to a company's network. It scans all incoming and existing files and emails using its powerful virus scanning technology to ensure the company’s systems and networks are protected from such threats. The firewall protects the systems from viruses, spam, spyware, and phishing. The firewall is continuously updated from the Barracuda cloud, thus ensuring that it does not have any vulnerabilities. It also detects threats at the same time, and is able to scale to the needs of any company.
Ambient I.T. Solutions provides its clients with a secondary MX host. Companies that host email servers on site need to deploy a secondary MX host to act as a backup for the central mail server. One of its key features of these systems are their spam protection, which filters out all unnecessary spam mails, thus preventing phishing. The Plugin also has a feature called Cpanel Backup MX which backup your mail by adding a secondary location for your incoming email to be stored. The MX host helps in ensuring that the primary mail server undertakes the activities under normal circumstances and continues even after the disruption of the mail server due to attacks, power outages or internet disruption. With its secondary server, the client's mail services won't be disrupted as the server will carry on the client's mail server activities, thus ensuring that there is no disruption bringing your business new growth opportunities.
If your business is located in the state of Oregon, we highly recommend Ambient IT solutions. It is an IT company in Portland, that has been protecting a variety of clients from phishing and spam attacks. Call 1.888.408.0770 today and begin achieving a peace of mind regarding your IT management!
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