What Is a Phishing Attack?

A phishing attack – better known as phishing – is when a malicious actor attempts to steal account details, personal information, or financial details from an individual. Typically, phishing attacks focus on business accounts and operate via communication mediums like SMS, email, and social media.

Common Types of Phishing Attacks
How to Identify Phishing Attacks
Best Practices for Preventing Phishing Attacks
Create a Bulletproof Security Strategy with Perimeter81

Phishing is an incredibly common form of attack vector, with over 30% of adults experiencing a phishing attack at some point. The prominence of phishing attacks is exactly why an increasing number of businesses are turning toward zero-trust network access systems in an attempt to keep their sensitive data like credit card information safe.

Common Types of Phishing Attacks

The central goal of the vast majority of phishing attacks is the same: to steal personal information like login credentials. But, the medium that malicious actors choose to deploy a phishing attack on may change the name. Small deviations in the name relate to the channel being used.

For example, Vishing is ‘Voice Phishing’, where a malicious actor calls someone and steals information via voice chat. Another example is Smishing (SMS Phishing) where someone phishes using SMS messages. Beyond these small name changes, there are a few major types of phishing attacks that count as different categories.

Here are the most important types of phishing attacks to know:

Spear Phishing: Spear phishing is a highly precise form of phishing, where a team of attackers gathers a great deal of personal information about someone before launching an attack. These targeted attacks are much more believable, as the team may already know your name, where you work, your job title, the names of your friends and family, and other information available online.
Whale Phishing: Whale phishing is a form of spear phishing that focuses on senior executives. These accounts have a large number of enterprise permissions in their business, making them highly valuable for data breaches and information stealing.
Pharming Phishing: Pharming is when a malicious actor creates a fake website that closely resembles one that a user will interact with frequently. For example, they could spoof a social media site or banking log-in page.

Phishing occurs on any platform that facilitates connection, spanning from suspicious email and text messages to social media sites and even via voice chat platforms.

How to Identify Phishing Attacks

Unfortunately, phishing attacks are becoming harder to spot. A decade ago, poor grammar, punctuation, and spelling were a huge giveaway, instantly alerting the reader that they were likely engaging with an email or message that was from an inauthentic source.

But, with the wide availability of AI-writing assistants like ChatGPT, a malicious actor can easily craft a fake message with perfect grammar in no time at all. With that in mind, it’s now harder to notice an email is fake.

Instead, look at the following factors:

The email address or number it is sent from: Is this a legitimate email?
The CTA of the communication: Is the recipient rushing you into taking a certain action?
Suspicious attachments: Don’t download anything you haven’t run through a malware scanner first.
Questionable email design: If the email just seems off from normal communications, go with your intuition.

There is no one trick you can use to identify phishing attacks.

However, the signs are almost always there. Carefully check the sender’s address, comb the email for suspicious content, and never click on a link you’re not 100% certain of. Worst comes to worst, you can always navigate to a company account from Google instead of via email links to check on the status of an account.

Don’t fall for the false sense of panic that phishing teams want to instill.

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Best Practices for Preventing Phishing Attacks

The good thing about phishing is that all of the attacks are typically fairly similar. Someone emailing you to tell you an account has been compromised or that you need to reset your password are all common phishing scams.

Here are the steps you can take some steps to mitigate any successful phishing attempts:

Educate Yourself: Phishing emails often have several red flags in them that anyone with knowledge of common phishing scams would spot. Take the time to educate yourself on what typical scams look like and the warning signs you should pay attention to.
Use a Security Solution: Comprehensive email firewalls will prevent the majority of phishing emails from arriving in an employee’s inbox. Employ robust security solutions to minimize the number of phishing emails that slip through the cracks.
Add Permissions Systems: Businesses that want to keep themselves as safe from the effects of phishing as possible should use account permissions systems. Preventing an account from accessing all of your files based on permission access levels will ensure that even if a hacker were to phish an account, they wouldn’t be able to do much.

While it’s impossible to completely eradicate phishing attacks, there are several strategies you can employ to lower the chance of a phishing attack successfully impacting your organization.

Putting the above tactics into play in your business will keep you as safe as possible.

Create a Bulletproof Security Strategy with Perimeter81

Phishing isn’t going anywhere. As a common threat vector for several decades, businesses should endeavor to find a comprehensive solution that can reduce the risk of phishing in their organization. A powerful protective solution to reduce the number of phishing emails that arrive in employee inboxes, lowers the chance of a successful phishing attack.

Perimeter 81 offers extensive cybersecurity support, with phishing protection that can prevent malicious software from entering your business environment. Perimeter 81’s Secure Web Gateway (SWG) protects against malware attacks, monitors web traffic for malicious content, and blocks access to potentially harmful traffic.

FAQs

How can phishing be prevented?

The most effective way to prevent fishing is by training employees to understand what phishing is and what attacks look like. If someone is able to realize that an email is likely a scam before clicking on it, they’re much less likely to fall into any common phishing traps. Education is the most effective defense when it comes to protecting against phishing.

What do phishers steal?

Malicious actors that phish will aim to steal personal information, financial details, or log-in details for corporate accounts. Using any of these, they can commit identity fraud, financial crimes, or breach valuable data from your business. Phishers will especially focus on high-risk industries, like finance and healthcare, as data and accounts stolen in these sectors can be considerably more valuable for them.

Who are the targets of phishing attacks?

The target of phishing attacks can be absolutely anyone. Phishers will often take a volume approach, sending out spam emails to hundreds of thousands of accounts and hoping that someone falls for their scam. Some phishing teams will target higher-value accounts or companies with precision attacks, known as spear phishing.

Why is phishing so effective?

Phishing is effective since it takes advantage of natural human action bias. When someone receives an email telling them to reset their bank account password as the account has just been compromised, they could easily panic. This panic and sense of urgency pushes people to make quick decisions, giving away details or passwords or clicking on links due to their action bias.

Why is phishing such a difficult problem to prevent?

There are thousands of active phishing scams happening at any one time, with the sheer quantity of this cyber threat making it impossible to stop. Another reason that phishing is difficult to prevent is that humans are always a weak link in cyber security. The vast majority of breaches come from human error, with one wrong click creating major problems.

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