PROECTION SHIELD OF ORGANIZATION

Whether financial or banking, personal or strategic, today corporate data is considered a treasure trove, and hackers compete to try to seize it. Cybersecurity has therefore become an essential weapon to defend against the many cyber-attacks that take place each year around the world.

“Phishing or phishing is one of the most widespread cyberattacks”

Here are going to explore and find out what phishing is and how to protect yourself from it.

What Is Phishing?

The word phishing comes from the contraction of two English words: “phreaking” which means “telephone hacking” and “fishing” which means “fishing”. In French, phishing is translated as phishing.

This is a widely used fraud technique on the Internet that allows hackers to recover sensitive personal data (banking information, passwords, etc.) from Internet users by pretending to be a trusted third party such as your bank, your energy supplier, a public institution (such as health insurance, taxes, etc.), your Internet access provider (ISP) or telephone, or even an e-commerce site.

Phishing is mainly carried out by email, but you can also fall victim to this fraudulent technique via social media, text messages or over the phone.

How Does Phishing Works?

Most often, you will receive an email that appears to be from a trusted organization or business asking you to click on a link to update your personal information, pay pending bills, view a message, or download an attachment.

However, the link directs you to a bogus website, a copy of the original, created by hackers. The information you enter is then retrieved directly by the fraudsters who will use it to usurp your identity or extract money from you.

As for the attachments, they contain viruses or malware that affect your computer and can, depending on the type, block access to your files in exchange for ransom (ransomware); collect personal information (spyware); or damage your computer or the corporate network (worms).

Tips To Fight Phishing

Unlike other cyber-attacks that exploit possible vulnerabilities in computer systems or computers, phishing takes advantage of human naivety.

It is therefore essential to encourage your employees to be suspicious before opening an email, and to train them to identify phishing attempts and learn the right actions to adopt to avoid biting the email 'fish hook’

Avoid opening emails from unknown recipients

Always be wary of messages you receive from complete strangers, even more so if they offer you gifts or sums of money for no reason. Avoid opening the email, but most importantly, avoid clicking on the link in the message or downloading the attachment.

Verify email address

You have just received a message from your bank, your electricity supplier or Internet access, but you are in doubt? First, verify the sender's email address. Does it match that of the messages you usually receive? Does it contain the domain name of the company? For example, Free Mobile's email address should be freemobile@free-mobile.fr, not log@adiciel.fr. Also pay attention to the spelling which can sometimes be very close: BMP Pariibas instead of BNP Paribas.

Check the link in the email

To do this, position your mouse over the link without clicking to display the address. You can then check if the link address matches the real address of the organization contacting you. Be careful because this can sometimes be very subtle and play with a single character (one letter less, one letter duplicated or one letter replaced by another).

Have an updated antivirus software

You should have a best antivirus software which should be installed in your computer and that should be updated time-to-time, so that your antivirus software can detect the threats and notify you about it and take action against it.

Look at the domain name

You opened an email and clicked on the link, but once on the website, you are asked to enter your personal and / or bank details, and you are in doubt. Check the website address to make sure you're on the right site, and not on a copy created by crooks. As with the email address, pay attention to the spelling

Pay attention to spelling and image quality

Most phishing attempts are written with spelling errors and poor syntax, and / or contain poor quality, often rasterized images. Today, however, the quality of phishing emails tends to improve, so be very careful.

Train your employees in cybersecurity

Today, training and raising the awareness of all employees of a company are the best defenses against the risk of cyber-attacks. Thus, they will be more suspicious, they will be able to identify the various online threats and they will know what attitudes to adopt.

Communicate securely

When you need to discuss sensitive topics or share confidential data with your employees, customers, partners or suppliers, favor the use of secure chats with encryption rather than e-mail. The same goes for sharing sensitive documents or files for which you can use secure data rooms.

Finally, be aware that no organization will ever ask you for your bank details. Such a request should immediately alert you.

Following all these tips and points will help you in protecting your organization from phishing attack and in becoming a shield for your organization in data loss and privacy breach.

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