Phishing Attacks – One of the largest cyber threats facing users today
A phishing attack, or email that includes a malicious link or attachment, has been a growing threat throughout this year. Why? Because email addresses are very easy to obtain. Whether it is through a security breach of a business or a website leak, they are increasingly accessible. Once obtained, hackers are able to distribute phishing campaigns that include a malicious link or attachment that could install various kinds of malware on the end-point. This may include viruses, worms, or ransomware. Often times, security solutions are ineffective in blocking these threats, because they are a new, unknown malware variant that have not yet been added to the blacklist. The blacklist is a list of all known malware, used by security solution providers to identify and prevent malicious software from executing. Unfortunately, since they are unknown threats, a blacklist will not detect them.
So, What Now?
PC Matic, PC Matic Pro, and PC Matic MSP use a globally automated whitelist approach to detect malware. This means, all unknown threats are blocked from running, until tested and proven safe by a malware research team. PC Matic has also enabled script based detection, which will also detect malicious non-executable attacks. These would be malicious scripting attacks that deliver malware through scripting agents such as CScript, WScript, and PowerShell. But what does all of this mean?
For example, if Jane Smith opens a phishing email, and unknowingly clicks on a malicious link – PC Matic will scan that attachment for security. Since it is an unknown file, it will not open. Instead, it will be sent to the PC Matic malware research team for testing. Therefore, Jane Smith’s data has remained secure, because instead of allowing the unknown file to open and install malware, it was stopped from executing to determine whether or not it is safe. Once the malware research team completes testing, they will categorize the malware as malicious. Therefore, it will be blocked from executing on all endpoints using PC Matic, PC Matic Pro and PC Matic MSP.