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5 Best Tips to Avoid Spear Phishing Attacks Search …

April 5, 2020 / Pallavi Dutta

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Did you know that targeted emails or spear phishing attacks are used in 91% of successful data  email security
breaches and in 95% of network attacks in the enterprise? In a cybersecurity survey, 56% of IT  Employee Awareness
decision-makers stated that spear phishing attacks are major security threats! But what are these  Hacking
“targeted” phishing attacks? Let’s proceed further to find out!  Impersonation attacks
 impersonation attacks
The Infamous Targeted Phishing Attacks  IoT
Today, around 91% of cyber-attacks are deployed using a spear phishing email and about 94% of  ISO 27001
these targeted emails consist of malicious file attachments that are the payload or source of
 KPMonitor
malware. These targeted phishing emails have increasingly become the common way of deploying
 Malware less attacks
cyber-attacks to gain personal information of vulnerable users.
 Mobile Security
These infamous spear phishing attacks are the email scams that are targeted towards any specific
 network security
individual or an organization. The motive is to steal sensitive and financial information of the
 People Risk Assessment
targeted victim for malicious reasons. This attack is deployed with well-prepared schemes of
acquiring victim’s personal information through available resources or information present online.    Phishing
 Ransomware
How Spear Phishing Work -Explained  Ransoware attack
These cyber attackers target victims who upload their personal information online, especially on  SMShing
social networking sites. By using a fake profile, they trace the targeted victim’s personal email  SQL injection attack
address, geographic location, list of friends or any recent purchases that they have made.
 TAB
Once these cyber crooks get all the required information of the victim, they disguise themselves as a  Threat Alert Button
trustworthy source or entity to obtain the targeted user’s sensitive information by sending a spoofed
 ThreatCop
email. 
 ThreatCop
On the other hand, expert spear phishing attacks involve phishers impersonating a trustworthy  Uncategorized
organization or individual in an email address to make it look like a legitimate email. They make a
 VAPT
plausible request to have the targeted user fall for the bait with a valid email content.
 Vishing
As for the
increase in the
success rate of
spear phishing,
the message
contains
attention gaining
urgent requests,
explaining why
sensitive
information is
required. Also, the
Diagrammatic explanation of how spear phishing attack works
victims are
tricked to click on
the malicious email attachments that redirect them to spoofed web pages or sites. 

These fraud pages ask victims to provide their login credentials, account numbers, PINs or access
information to unauthorized files. In the aftermath of all this process, these cyber criminals misuse
passwords or sensitive information to access other websites that hold confidential information such
as financial details related to credit cards.

With everything obtained, these cyber criminals become empowered to easily access the victim’s
back account or create a new identity by using all the information of the victim. This spear phishing
also tricks targeted users into downloading malicious codes or malware attachments provided in the
message.

How to Identify Spear Phishing Emails to Stay

Secure?
Spear phishing attacks have become highly sophisticated and complex in nature nowadays. No
matter how effective these attacks are, these following ways can help to spot spear phishing emails:

Spoofed domain and sender’s address:

Spear phishing usually involves domain spoofing and impersonation of the legitimate identity in
the email’s sender address.  

Email subject line:

Panic arising email subject lines include words like Request, Follow up, Urgent, Important,
Payment Status, etc. that initiates a sense of duty to comply with the message request.  

Email content hygiene:

To spot a spear phishing email, check message content for grammatical errors or spelling
mistakes as phishers usually leave complex clues, thinking these hidden clues would go
unnoticed. 

Attachment landmines:

Hackers know how email attachments are easy bait for getting victims into clicking on a fake
document or link regardless of the unexpectancy of attachment. 

Tips to Avoid Spear Phishing Attacks

According to cybersecurity researches, spear phishing attacks are highly dangerous in nature as
they are designed with the concept to get around the traditional email security filters. These emails
typically do not include malicious attachments. Instead they use email spoofing techniques along
with social engineering tactics that are less likely to be blocked.

But with the advanced cybersecurity tools and solutions, preventing phishing attacks is possible!
Here are the best five ways to help you prevent spear phishing emails from landing into your email
inbox:  

1. Implementation of Email Authentication Protocols

What could be better than implementing DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication,

Reporting and Conformance) as an email authentication protocol to prevent these email-based
attacks? The DMARC relies on two main established email authentication standards, SPF
(Sender Policy Framework) & DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail). This authentication protocol
analyses the email against the database to check if any record matches for the sender email.
In case it doesn’t then the email is rejected and the report is submitted to the security
administrator. DMARC ensures that no fake or spoofed email reaches end-users. 

     2. Multi-factor Authentication (MFA)

Using multi-factor authentication for emails can surely help in mitigating the risk of falling to
spear phishing attacks. It is an extra layer of security for the data of users. In case if a hacker
holds any information, it will need to bypass this layer of security which will lead to two steps
of identification. MFA asks for a randomly generated token from the user or a one time
password or an extra login to ensure that the accessing user is a legitimate identity. 

    3. Risk Assessment

For any organization, it is important to take a cybersecurity risk assessment to find out the
level of vulnerability existing in the working environment. A cybersecurity risk assessment is a
better way to identify the cyber threat posture of an organization by running phishing
simulation attacks on employees. Employees are the most vulnerable resource and the
weakest link in the cybersecurity chain of an organization.

In order to turn
them into the
strongest link
and help them
in recognizing
phishing emails,
it is important
to provide them
Importance of employee awareness training
with a proper
 cyber security
awareness training. There are various leading risk assessment tools that offer to train
employees with phishing attack simulations and knowledge imparting spear phishing
awareness and other cyber attack vectors.   

     4. Verify Suspicious Emails 

If you receive any email that looks too good to be legitimate, make sure to get it verified by the
IT security team of your organization. Or for a better and easier way, use incident response
tools to get all the suspicious-looking emails verified and avoid them from landing in your inbox
again. Spear phishing security tools like phishing incident response tools allow users to report
emails that look fraudulent in nature in real-time.

    5. Don’t Respond Immediately

Lot of email scams use panic creating email content that raises the sense of urgency within
the user to respond to that email. Such emails either ask for sensitive information like, account
details, passwords, credit card details, or ask users to click on the malicious email
attachments. It is important to read and give a second look to such suspicious emails before
falling for them. Be careful in checking for sender’s email address and verifying email’s
content.

Cybersecurity is a two way street. In order to keep your organization safe and secure, it is important
to implement and follow the cybersecurity best practices!

Let us know what are your suggestions on spear phishing in the comments section below. 

Thank you for stopping by to read this blog, we hope that you had a good read!

Pallavi Dutta
See author's posts
 Posted in Anti-phishing tool, Phishing, Uncategorized / Tagged Cyber attacks, cyber awareness, Cyber
Security, phishing, spear phishing, spear phishing attacks, spear phishing awareness, spear phishing
meaning, spear phishing security

 Beginner’s Complete Guide to Cloud How to stay cyber secure while you work from
Computing home? 

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