What is phishing?
Phishing is a form of cybercrime where an attacker poses as a legitimate institution or a known person to trick an individual into sharing sensitive information such as bank account numbers, usernames and passwords, credit card details or other personally identifiable information (PII). Scammers use malicious emails, SMS phishing, and voice phishing to gain unauthorized access to accounts and carry out identity theft.
Phishing has evolved well beyond the traditional email scam, with attackers now using multiple channels to reach victims.
- Email Phishing - The most common form, where scammers send malicious emails designed to look like they're from a trusted source, often containing a malicious link to a fake website built to steal credentials.
- SMS Phishing (Smishing) - Uses text messages instead of email to deliver a suspicious link or prompt urgent action, often impersonating banks, delivery services, or IT departments.
- Voice Phishing (Vishing) - Relies on phone calls or voicemails, where an attacker impersonates a trusted contact to pressure victims into revealing sensitive information over the phone.
Left unchecked, these tactics can lead to unauthorized access to company systems and identity theft for employees and customers alike.
How to prevent phishing attacks
Preventing phishing attacks calls for a multi-layered cybersecurity strategy that combines employee awareness with the right technology and organizational safeguards. Here are the top tips to help stop phishing scams before they reach your users.
Think Before You Click
Educating users to recognize and report phishing messages and other suspicious activity is key. Employees should also learn to spot phishing attempts like clone phishing, where a legitimate email is copied and resent with a suspicious message. Common warning signs include:
- Suspicious email addresses
- A suspicious link or malicious link leading to a fake website
- A generic greeting (Hi there!)
- An unusual email or instant message
- Grammatical errors
- Links outside of the organization
- An effort to create panic so as to prompt hasty action
Segment Your Networks
Network segmentation keeps highly sensitive data restricted, making it more difficult for cyberattacks to penetrate. By isolating critical systems from the rest of the network, a single compromised account is less likely to give attackers a path to your most valuable assets.
Audit Your Cybersecurity Environment
Regularly auditing your cybersecurity environment helps assess vulnerabilities and identify emerging threats before they can be exploited. These findings should inform ongoing defensive strategies, so your protections evolve alongside new phishing techniques.
Install Email Filters and Anti-Phishing Tools
Using email filters and other anti phishing tools to scan all inbound email in real-time and block users from clicking on links to suspicious websites, sandbox and scan all attachments for potential security risks, identify suspicious links before they are released to users, and prevent unauthorized access to sensitive systems.
Stop phishing emails with superior protection
As email threats continue to evolve, it takes increasingly powerful technology to stop phishing emails and prevent spear phishing attacks from damaging your organization. attacks from damaging your organization. Hackers continue to devise new forms of email phishing scams designed to trick users into wiring money to fraudulent accounts.
While many companies have tried to stop phishing emails by training employees on ways to spot suspicious email, nearly one-quarter of phishing emails are nevertheless opened even after employees have been trained about the most common phishing techniques. That means, to truly stop phishing emails, you need technology that can eliminate the possibility of human error and automatically prevent phishing attacks from reaching your users' inboxes.
Choose a multilayered defense to prevent phishing attacks
As phishing email scams
continue to successfully breach security defenses, more organizations are adopting a multilayered approach to security strategy in order to prevent phishing attacks.
Where Phishing Attacks Typically Start
Cyber phishing attacks typically begin with an email message that appears to come from a well-known or trusted company. Frequent sources include:
- Social media websites
- Financial institutions
- Shipping companies
The email directs the recipient to visit a website infected by malware, or a bogus website that asks the user to divulge sensitive information like passwords, Social Security numbers, credit card information and other confidential data.
How Mimecast Helps
Mimecast email security solutions can help to prevent phishing attacks with cloud-based services that block malicious attachments and URLs and with end-user empowerment services that promote greater phishing awareness among employees.
Mimecast technology to stop phishing emails
Mimecast Targeted Threat Protection, part of Mimecast's email security solutions, scans all inbound email in real-time to stop phishing emails and other advanced threats. As a cloud-based service, Mimecast requires no additional infrastructure or IT overhead to stop phishing emails – protection can be activated quickly and easily through the cloud platform. Mimecast provides protection on and off the corporate network and on mobile devices while creating no disruption for users.
How Mimecast solutions stop phishing emails
To stop phishing emails, Mimecast Targeted Threat Protection provides three levels of defenses against the most dangerous techniques used in phishing attacks.
URL Protect
Offers phishing protection against malicious links in messages by scanning all inbound email in real-time and blocking users from clicking on links to suspicious websites. Mimecast scans links in both live and archived emails on every click to defend against delayed attacks.
Attachment Protect
Helps stop phishing emails containing weaponized attachments by pre-emptively sandboxing them and performing security checks before they are delivered to employees. Mimecast can also transcribe attachments to a safe file format that neutralizes any malicious code.
Impersonation Protect
Scans inbound emails in real-time to stop phishing emails that may appear to be sent from a trusted source or legitimate business contact. Mimecast searches the header, domain information and body content for signs of social engineering techniques commonly used in whaling and CFO fraud attacks. Suspicious email may be blocked, bounced or tagged with a warning.
In addition to technology to stop phishing emails, Mimecast's email security solutions can also defend against malware, spam, data leaks and other advanced security threats.
Stay Ahead of Evolving Phishing Threats
No single tactic can fully shut the door on phishing on its own. It takes people, process, and technology working together to keep your organization protected. As attackers refine their techniques, security strategies need to evolve just as quickly, combining ongoing employee education with automated defenses that catch what humans miss.
Ready to strengthen your defenses? Learn more about how to stop phishing emails with Mimecast, and about solutions for Office 365 phishing and virus ransomware
