82% of data breaches involved user intervention leading to successful social engineering attacks, errors, and misuse. Phishing is a kind of Social Engineering attacks. An art of manipulating and deceiving people for nefarious purposes. Social engineering attack leverages human emotions and not computers.

Key indicators of a Phishing Cyberattacks

Cybercriminals launch Phishing cyberattacks via email, text messages, and phone calls where human intervention is necessary to extract personal and confidential information. Let us see how to spot the red flags!

• Double-check the domain name

Cybercriminals design well-crafted emails that impersonate real websites or applications to convince the user to make a click. They create a fake domain mimicking a legit platform or business and send thousands of generic requests. Such bogus websites or domains contain misspelled characters. For instance, consider a legit site – www.amazon.com , and a cybercriminal impersonated site – www.amazonn.com A user clicking such fake links is vulnerable to cyberattacks and susceptible to organizational-level data breaches. A click is enough to steal credentials or install malware onto the user’s device. Hasty careless clicks may lead to data breaches, monetary loss, and whatnot! Always take time to go through an email and think before clicking a link and downloading attachments that seem out of place.

• Look for Spelling and Grammatical Errors

If an email lands in your inbox from an unknown source, then skim the message for grammatical and spelling mistakes. Cybercriminals send phishing emails from different parts of the world. They may or may not speak the same language you do, so it is highly likely to spot these errors. An email containing more spelling or grammatical mistakes and a very causal way of addressing the user is malicious.

• Generic Message Content

Phishing cyberattacks are similar to catching a fish in the ocean. Metaphorically, fish are the users. Therefore, phishing cyberattacks are not highly targeted, although some are. In such scenarios, cybercriminals use generic message content sending it to numerous users awaiting clickbait. It is advisable to treat such emails and messages with a higher level of suspicion.

• Check the Sender Details and Email Subject Line

A typical lure is to create a sense of urgency and a state of panic among users. If a cybercriminal sends an email with a subject line indicating you to act immediately, then it is a sign of a potential phishing cyberattack. For instance, receiving emails and text messages referring to your account password expiration, updating personal information, making payments to continue services, and so on. There are possibilities to receive an email from a sender with a familiar name that is the same as the user’s reporting manager or a higher official. In such cases, it is necessary to check the email address as a precaution.

• Suspicious Email Attachments

It is wise not to click on links and download attachments without careful inspection. Receiving an email with a PDF, word file, or zip file at an untimely hour and never-seen-before sender is malicious. Be a detective while surfing the internet or being online. Numerous cyber security vulnerabilities are surfacing on a near-weekly basis that target browsers and operating systems executing Zero-Day exploits. Clicking on unknown links redirects to malicious websites and alerts cybercriminals about clickbait. Also, downloading and accessing unknown email attachments leads to behind-the-scenes malware installation or harmful script execution on a user’s system and device.  

Wrap Up:

Phishing is a well-known social engineering attack in which cybercriminals send messages pretending to be a trusted person or platform. Businesses face phishing, a growing cyberattack vector where the users are their ultimate target. Phishing cyberattacks manipulate users into performing actions such as downloading and installing malicious scripts, clickbait, and disclosing user credentials. The new mantra is, “Think before you act!” Reduce the likelihood of successful phishing emails and restrict user interactions by simulated phishing attacks and cyber security awareness training for your employees.   ABOUT SNS Secure Network Solutions (SNS) provides a quantifiable, risk-based approach to building a global structure of cyber security infrastructure based on internationally recognized frameworks and practices. We have been providing services and catering to clients across industries for the last 22 years. Write to us at [email protected] or visit us at www.snsin.com.