Increase Employee Phishing Awareness with Anti-Phishing Software

Though enterprises deploy state of the art network security systems to protect against threats, it serves no real purpose when it comes to social engineering. This is because a social engineering attack could bypass all defenses. Hence, social engineering is the greatest concern of the enterprises. Moreover, the social engineering attacks are so refined that it is hard to identify and avoid. One of the most popular social engineering techniques is phishing, which makes use of fraudulent means to obtain personal and corporate data.

According to a recent survey, almost half of enterprises have fallen victim to social engineering practices leading to security breaches and data loss. As per this survey, the primary motivation behind phishing attacks is financial gain followed by competitive advantage and revenge. What makes social engineering dangerous is the fact that it attacks the most valuable and the most vulnerable link in an organization and that is employees. Social engineers take advantage of human behavior and trick them into breaking normal security procedures.

Though there are many products and services that effectively address the "process and technology" aspect of security, only few solutions are available that adequately address 'people risk'. Since social engineering and phishing rely heavily on human interaction and appeal to the vanity, authority, and greed of the people, what enterprises need is an effective anti phishing tool. This helps to build the first line of defense by increasing an employee's awareness of phishing.

The anti phishing software assists organizations in evaluating the readiness of employees against phishing and social engineering attacks. By installing this software tailored with information about people, processes and technology within the organization, the enterprise can simulate either a simple phishing attack or a more targeted spear phishing attack. The tool then analyzes the social behaviors towards the attack and generates a detailed report. Based on the findings enterprises can design remedial measures to alleviate phishing risks, educate people and modify processes. This will help to reduce possible threats due to such attacks in the future.

A best of breed anti phishing tool provides statistics on user behavior, measures security awareness among employees, identifies data leakage, assesses Data Loss Prevention (DLP) programs, and tests the incident response program. Thus with such a tool a ‘teaching moment’ can be generated that provides a safe, customized learning experience for users – resulting in increased employee phishing awareness and knowledge that helps protect the sensitive information entrusted to them.

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Phishing Awareness & Protection – An Absolute Imperative

The growth in technology has given rise to a good number of cyber crimes and security breaches with Phishing attacks being the most worrisome of the lot. Having the potential to damage your company’s image and reputation, Phishing attacks are especially insidious as it endeavors to manipulate its victims into giving up confidential data by pretending to be  someone who the victim would  disclose information to. Phishing protection has become an essential component of any company’s security initiatives.

Adequate Phishing protection includes being aware of the ways in which a Phishing attack can be launched. The most powerful weapon against Phishing is common sense and the following rules that every user should oblige to. Like other such components, Phishing protection not only safeguards the company’s assets, but it also protects the employees themselves. Educating  employees on how Phishing works and what it looks like, as well as what to be observant of, can go a long way to providing an effective last line of defense against Phishing attempts.

Investing in an anti Phishing software ensures that employees follow the best practices for protection against Phishing and increase awareness. The software facilitates calculation of Phishing risks and demonstrates high flexibility with timely reporting services.  An effective anti-Phishing tool carries out mock attacks on the employees and also educates them on how to deal with these attacks. These tools also conduct simulated Phishing attack to test the responsiveness and the reactions of your employees.

Protecting an organization from the damage incurred by Phishing and malware scams requires advanced anti Phishing tool It is hence crucial for an organization to have a successful risk management and control mechanism against social engineering attacks to be dynamic and keep up with evolving security risks. With Phishing attacks wreaking havoc, enterprises need to take a proactive approach and engage in external threat monitoring against your brand, assets, and intellectual property. With a good anti-Phishing solution employees are armed to counter any attacks. These anti-Phishing solutions proactively seek out threats against an organization that can be discovered across the public and hidden internet, such as targeted Phishing or malware attacks, so that they can be taken down before they succeed.

Look for a solution that ensures eliminate all kinds of sophisticated Phishing attacks.   One of the most important things you can do to avoid Phishing attacks is keep your antivirus software up-to-date because most antivirus vendors have signatures that protect against some common technology exploits.

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Stay Safe From Phishing Attacks

With the increased amount of Phishing attacks it has become essential to understand what exactly a phishing email is. Any internet user can come across a phishing mail that at the first glance might seem to be an authentic mail. Phishing emails come from unauthentic sources and claim to from banking, financial, online auction and lottery websites. They send users compelling content that in terms of huge prize money, international products and discounted price and aim to rob an individual of his or her personal data.

The mode of inquiry is very thrifty and often the users are not able to grasp dangerous phishing attacks targeted at them. Though you might hear less about Phishing mails as compared to virus, spyware or malware attacks, they all are equally hazardous.

The Way Phishing Attacks Operate?

The most common way in which hackers and third party intruders make a phishing attacks work is through the mails. There are situations when they take the names of reputed brands. For example, the MSN or Yahoo lottery mails that people receive as mobile messages or mails, with huge amounts as winning prize money are all phishing mails. These mails ask you give away your email passwords and bank details and end up hacking your email, accounts and even corrupting your computer system.

Hence, phishing mails generally operate on human emotions and play on individual unpreparedness and vulnerability. Today phishers have devised sophisticated attacks that are difficult to decide. Most of the time these mails will have no contact details. Hence protection from phishing is a necessity today. This is especially applicable for eminent brands that have employees unaware of such attacks.

Advanced Anti-Phishing Solutions

Today leading solution providers have introduced anti-phishing software that assists organizations to evaluate whether their employees have the required knowledge of social engineering and its side effects. The software helps in the following ways:-

• Helps enterprises in estimating the probable hazards associated with phishing
• Offers elastic reporting and incorporate them back into the company’s chief performance-indicator framework
• Offers a “road map" solution concentrating on security awareness and training within an enterprise
• Helps to recognize weakness within people, method and technology links
• Helps in prioritizing remediation attempts through useful benchmarking and maturity analysis
• Helps in increasing employee awareness and expertise to safeguard crucial information

Only investing in antivirus or antispyware protection is not sufficient today. In order to stay secured from hazardous phishing attacks anti-phishing solutions offered by eminent service providers are useful.