Email is usually promoted as a favorite medium for iniating cyberattacks against organizations and individuals. Why? Because it’s easy to hide the true intent behind an email attack within its contents, whether they are embedded images in the message itself, or links to external sources. How can you be absolutely certain that the links in your email inbox are legitimate and secure?
Cybercriminals are constantly looking for new and creative methods to steal data and information from businesses. While spam has been around for a while, phishing emails have increased in popularity because they are more effective at achieving the desired endgame. How can you ensure that phishing scams don’t harm your business in the future?
Phishing scams have had a supporting role in many of the latest cyber threats, often as the means the attacker has used to start off their attack. This attack vector is relatively easy to avoid in most cases, but requires education for the end user.
One thing that both fishing and phishing have in common is the use of lures. With the right lure, the chance of successfully catching the target improves. When it comes to the digital lures seen in phishing scams, research shows that social media is the most effective.
Most hacking attacks are the result of a flaw or vulnerability found within the code of a program or operating system, but we rarely take into account the ones that don’t. Hackers often take advantage of the human side of hacking as well, a process known as “social engineering.” This is usually the act of conning users into handing over personal information of their own free will, and it’s surprisingly effective.
