Due to the advancements in this digital era, businesses may expect to see hacker behavior and targets evolve in the future year. As a result, they are faced with the Herculean task of ensuring a secure digital transformation. It is because not only does the digital transformation provide innovation, but it also brings us even closer to various cyber-attacks – one of which is phishing. Phishing is when a person posing as a reputable organization contacts a target or targets via email, phone, or text message to trick them into disclosing sensitive information.

There are several types of phishing attacks, but spear phishing remains the most popular, with 65 percent of all known threat actors using it.

Spear Phishing

Spear phishing is an email or electronic communication scam that targets a single person, company, or organization. Spear phishing attacks are more targeted than phishing attacks. It tries to create trust with vulnerable people by employing unique lures and personal information.

Tessian's study in 2021 showed that employees receive 14 phishing emails every year on average.

Cisco's 2021 Cybersecurity Threat Trends Report mentioned that at least one person in 86 percent of businesses clicked on a phishing link, and based on the company's data, phishing accounts for almost 90% of data breaches.

The studies above prove that employees are often the weak link in most anti-phishing strategies. Spear phishing has a several impacts on a business that will represent the business in a bad light. Between 2013-2015, a Lithuanian hacker impersonated a Taiwan-based company Quanta Computer, and sent a fake invoice to Facebook and Google that costed them $100 million; it is clamed to be the most expensive phishing attack ever.

A lot of factors influence the amount of money lost, including reputational damage, loss of company value, and business disruption. Businesses should avoid such severe damages if they do not want to go bankrupt, but how can they protect themselves from spear phishing attacks?

5 Tips to Save Your Business from Spear Phishing

Businesses should consider cyber security as their digital innovation strategy to secure their business and digital transformation process as well. Nevertheless, here are 5 tips to save your business from spear phishing.

1. Take advantage of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AI uses data analysis and machine learning to examine metadata, content, context, and typical user behavior. First, it looks for anomalies and warning signals. Then it analyses the messages. After that, it learns the messages' typical behavior, their textual patterns, and whether the context makes sense.

2. Keep your systems updated with the latest security patches

It's critical to keep your systems updated with the latest security patches for your digital safety and cybersecurity. The sooner you update them, the safer your business will be. Educate your employees to update your system whenever the pop-up reminder appears until the next reminder update.

3. Enable Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

Enabling multi-factor authentication (MFA) can be one of the quickest and most effective security measures to protect user identities and reduce the threat and potential impact of spear phishing. It makes more difficult for an attacker to exploit stolen credentials as it adds additional layer of security over a simple login and password.

4. Implement advanced email protection and encrypt sensitive information

Email protection guards against more sophisticated cyber-attacks like phishing. Business can use a software that includes threat intelligence to filter out emails that aren't legitimate or harmful. In addition, encrypt your business’ sensitive information to avoid your data being decrypted in the wrong hands and being harmed by a spear phishing attack.

5. Invest in your employees' cyber security awareness training

Employees must be educated to identify and report spear phishing through cyber security awareness training. Cyber Security awareness training should be done at least once per year, preferably within the first three months of the year. It’s because that’s the best time for a company-wide refresher and mastering the fundamentals.

Spear phishing is a dangerous email-based cyber-attack that will continue to increase among the cybercriminals. Only good technology, processes, and human awareness can keep the recipient from being fooled once the attacker impersonates someone. So that’s why it is extremely important for your business and your employees to have a thorough understanding about spear phishing and how to get away from it.

Raise your cyber security awareness as your digital innovation strategy for a safer digital transformation journey through our Cyber Security programs at Multimatics!

Reference:

Armorblox. (n.d.). Spear Phishing 101: What It Is and How to Prevent It. https://www.armorblox.com/learn/spear-phishing/

Purohit, A. (n.d.). 5 of the most expensive phishing scams in history. DeltaNet. https://www.delta-net.com/blog/2021/07/five-of-the-most-expensive-phishing-scams-in-history