Phishing involves misusing sensitive information with the aid of malicious links sent through emails. Such malicious links are loaded with harmful viruses and malware that can collect sensitive information. This information about an individual or a company can then be used to extort and steal money. If going by stats, the average money that businesses lose to phishing attacks crosses 1.6 million US dollars globally. Appalling, isn’t it? However, the problem doesn’t end here. Shockingly, hackers are learning new ways with every passing day to trap more and more people, and one such deadly upgradation over normal phishing is spear phishing.
But What Is Spear Phishing In General?
This question bothers a lot of people and the answer is given below.
Spear phishing is much more detailed than normal phishing. In normal phishing, the emails that are sent out to the targets are made authentic looking. It becomes difficult to identify those spam emails from the legit ones. And when the targets open those emails and click on the attachments and links, they are hacked.
But when talking about spear phishing, the emails sent out are much more authentic since they contain a lot of personal details and information about the target. It makes such emails appear to be legit and sent by reputed people only. Spear phishing targets specific people/companies after hackers do their research. Which is why people fall for these traps more often than normal phishing. Scary, isn’t it? So, does it mean that there are no ways to actually identify and prevent spear phishing at all? Well, certainly no. A little elaborate, but there is a bundle of ways that can help in reducing spear phishing attacks.
How To Identify And Prevent Spear Phishing?
If you’re an ongoing business, then the best way to identify spear phishing involves the method given below.
- If unidentified emails from unwanted/unknown people appear in your business email ID, the chances are maximum that you’ve been specifically targeted
If you suspect that you might be under the radar of spear phishing, inform your security team right away. The ways in which you can safeguard your staff and company from such threats include the following.
- Do not create random passwords. Use paid tools and password manager apps to create a unique – at least 20 characters long – password for cybersecurity
- Limit permission to access IOT devices to a limited few people only. Even better if you use a two-step or multi-step authentication system. It will help in reducing hacking attempts since hackers will have to pass through multiple authentication steps, making it tough to gain a forceful entry in your server system