Phishing Awareness V6 – With so many phishing attacks emerging every day, one rogue employee could cause irreparable financial, operational or reputational harm. Security awareness training turns employees into your first line of defense while creating a robust security culture within an organization.
This course will teach you to identify and report phishing emails as well as other types of social engineering techniques such as typical, spear and whaling attacks.
Phishing Attacks
Although APTs, recompiled malware code, and fileless ransomware remain threats today, one tried-and-true attack method still accounts for 44% of social engineering attacks – phishing. According to Verizon 2023 Data Breach Report.
Phishing attacks involve sending unsuspecting victims an email asking for sensitive data such as passwords, financial details and credit card numbers that the attacker then uses to steal their identities, commit fraudulent transactions and charge up their credit cards fraudulently. Businesses need to become familiar with different types of phishing attacks in order to recognize them early enough and prevent these incidents from taking place.
Cybercriminals employ various attack methods in their phishing campaigns, with one common goal in mind: convincing individuals to provide them with their personal data. They might do this for financial gain (selling stolen credentials on underground hacker forums), cyberespionage purposes or political/ideological motivations.
Phishing scams typically involve mass email distribution to multiple recipients at once. While it can be hard to discern whether an email you receive is genuine or not, one way is to check its URL link within it.
If the email contains an unfamiliar or unexpected URL that does not match with that of its sender’s domain, this is often an indicator that it could be phishing. Furthermore, an unusual sense of urgency or request coming from sources you wouldn’t expect should also raise suspicion.
Criminals using more advanced attacks often employ spear phishing techniques, in which criminals specifically target specific individuals or companies using open-source intelligence gathered from websites like social media and the internet to research an intended victim. Therefore, employees need to know how to recognize signs of targeted phishing attacks such as looking out for shortened URLs or emails from people whom appear suspicious when receiving such emails – this knowledge should enable employees to protect themselves against possible scammers and avoid becoming victims themselves.
Phishing Techniques
Phishing is a multifaceted attack, so attackers need to use multiple techniques in order to be successful in their phishing attempts. Common methods include creating malicious URLs which hide their true destination through link manipulation (homograph spoofing), misspelling domain or subdomain names to make it look similar to an actual legitimate one, impersonating trusted contacts to create urgency, or employing other trickery to induce victims into clicking links or attachments.
Phishing attacks can have many devastating effects, from unleashing ransomware to stealing account credentials or money from accounts, and taking over endpoints in order to access sensitive data from multiple accounts.
Phishing attacks often come through email. Spear phishing attacks are highly targeted, using open-source intelligence to find organisations or individuals and craft more convincing messages. Attackers may even target entire businesses or departments by using email addresses of senior-ranking figures as bait to fool employees into believing the attack comes from an official source.
Phishing attacks can also occur via telephone and chat services like Skype and Slack. Man-in-the-browser attacks (also called man-in-the-middle attacks) involve an attacker intercepting and changing communication chains between two parties for personal gain; social engineering allows attackers to gain access to sensitive data more easily by impersonating companies, government agencies or charities in order to gain entry.
Clone phishing involves replicating real emails sent by their targets and replacing links or attachments with malicious ones, impersonating CEOs or other executives as bait to force victims into wire transfers or providing credentials on malicious websites.
Anti-virus software provides some defences against phishing attacks, including scanning attachments for suspicious content and malware. But most successful attacks use deceptive phishing attempts that appear as genuine messages with images to make it hard to distinguish. Organizations can reduce phishing’s success by implementing DMARC and encouraging contacts to do the same, which prevents these emails from looking as they did upon receipt and is usually blocked by most anti-virus software.
Phishing Scams
Phishing scams aim to lure you into taking actions that give attackers access to your device, accounts or personal data. They typically come in the form of emails pretending to come from banks, online retailers, friends or family asking you to click a link or provide personal details; or text messages (known as Smishing) asking you to act quickly so as to claim prizes quickly, secure accounts quickly or receive packages quickly; these may include suspicious links leading to malicious websites, infiltrating devices with malware or both.
Spear phishing is an increasingly sophisticated form of phishing in which attackers conduct research into an organization’s power structure in order to target specific individuals or departments. For example, attackers could identify the marketing department by researching its project managers before sending an email purporting to come from this department containing a link leading to a password protected document containing stolen invoices that can have serious repercussions for an organisation. This type of attack can have disastrous results.
Clone phishing is another popular technique used by attackers, in which they gain control of an individual’s device and sends out emails or SMSs with malicious links or attachments that look legitimate to recipients, with correct company logo and contact details, good spelling and grammar, genuine-looking padlock icons on websites or emails, as well as fake padlock icons to mask true addresses. Scammers may even employ short URLs in order to conceal true addresses.
Scammers may exploit public WiFi networks to engage in man-in-the-middle attacks that allow them to intercept communication between two unwitting parties – especially if these two parties exchange sensitive information such as banking or credit card details.
Scammers are constantly coming up with innovative ways to exploit people. One such technique is social media phishing, in which scammers send an impostor message that looks like it comes from your account urging a friend to click a link or share an attachment. They can also spoof identities by hijacking or registering email addresses then using tools to alter spelling or add extra letters – to protect against these types of attacks you should always have an internet security suite with protections against malware, ransomware and other threats – while being vigilant about clicking links or hovering over links ensuring they lead you directly to genuine sites containing genuine web addresses containing real addresses containing genuine addresses that should always include protections against malware, ransomware and other threats – with such suites including protections against malware ransomware threats you should always have an internet security suite protecting you from these types of attacks which should include protections against these types of threats!
Social Engineering
Social engineering has quickly become one of the favorite strategies of cyber criminals. It allows them to gain entry to company networks and access vital information and money, and even facilitates hiding their identities by impersonating trustworthy sources in order to dupe victims into disclosing personal details such as banking details, passwords or any other confidential material that could include banking details or passwords. Social engineers use digital mediums such as email, social media profiles and even phones – such as pretexting which involves calling end users directly and asking them for sensitive data (such as banking details or passwords).
This phishing awareness training introduces various techniques used for social engineering attacks and provides tips on how to spot them, such as phishing, spear phishing, whaling and smishing. Furthermore, this session explores why cyber criminals use these methods and the effect they have on businesses.
To ensure your staff can identify phishing attacks and avoid being fooled, conducting regular security awareness tests is recommended. You can carry these out yourself or with help from specialists; their results provide invaluable feedback about how effectively your employees are protecting the business.
Designing tailored phishing tests that suit your business and vulnerabilities is a complex task, which involves risk analysis and the setting of targets, followed by simulating various threats – either using grey box or black box techniques – with grey box tests providing more access for you to simulate any threat possible while black box requires deeper knowledge of your organization, its processes, and essential resources for deeper examination of weaknesses and threats.
Make a phishing awareness test more realistic with tools such as the name-dropping tool, which displays fake names and contact numbers in emails sent out to employees in an effort to gauge whether they take the bait and report an attack or not.