The advancements in the tech industry is highly growing and while the industry experts are trying to come up with new solutions that can help humanity, knowledgeable criminals are also coming up with ways that bring havoc to IT consumers. Cyber criminals use different ways to harass, steal or blackmail internet users which include virus attacks, ransomware and phishing.
Computer viruses will destroy your data while ransomware will take your data hostage until you pay a certain fee and phishing will lead to the theft of your important business information. Whichever the kind of cyber-attack that your business receives, the level of accompanying losses can be enormous.
Why do phishing scams happen?
Phishing is an attempt by internet scammers to trick you into giving out your personal or business information for the purposes of stealing money or sensitive data. This is a common theft practice where individuals and companies have found their bank details breached and lots of money lost. Companies have also found themselves making payments to wrong entities.
The state of tech today has changed the way business and other things are done. Businesses are transacted online and the level of competition is growing such that you will need to have a good strategy in order to remain competitive.
It is a fact that not many businesses manage to run successfully and it is not surprising that they will want to know how the successful ones manage to sail through the tough competition environment. Scammers are therefore after such information and others to sell it out or blackmail your business.
How phishing scams are distributed
It is true that the frequency and sophistication of phishing attacks are at the peak currently. This is because many individuals and companies are reporting increased numbers of such attacks. Phishing scams can easily be disrupted if individuals can easily spot them. The problem is that not many people including employees and top company executives are able to spot them. So, phishing can come in different ways including:
- Spear phishing is when scammers trick you into thinking that you have a connection with them and so provide your personal information to them. They manage to do this by using some of your information like name, phone number, and work position and so on.
- Deceptive phishing is where fraudsters impersonate a legitimate company by sending an email that resembles that of the company and request personal information.
- Pharming is where you get redirected to a malicious scam website even if you typed the correct address.
- CEO Phishing tricks employees by impersonating their top executives and authorize wrong payments to malicious accounts.
- Dropbox and Google Docs phishing is where fraudsters open a web page that is similar to the legitimate websites and users will therefore login using a fake page.
How to protect yourself from phishing
The best way to protect yourself or business against any type of phishing is to spot it and so you will only spot a phishing attempt if you can recognize it. This requires you to carry out phishing awareness training from time to time for all your company employees.
The tech that your company uses may have brought many benefits but it also comes with its own dangers that you should be aware of in order to protect your business. Apart from training, you can use the available anti-fraud and threat intelligence software to analyze and mitigate phishing and other cyber threats that come your way.
The benefits of today’s tech can turn into a real nightmare if you happen to fall a victim of any of the criminal activities carried out by cyber criminals.
