How To Stay Protected From Phishing? What Phishing Is All About?

Cyber-security is a serious concern, businesses and individuals have lost their reputation and reliability after becoming victims of these. Cyber criminals keep finding ways to infiltrate in to the systems and get their desired crime committed. Some of these criminals use sophisticated cybercrime approaches and use unique ways to be-fool their targets. Phishing is one of the sophisticated methods that hackers and cybercriminals use to hack any account. Through phishing, hackers gather personal information by sending misleading emails and directing their prey to different unprotected websites. This practice of phishing is largely followed by cyber attackers to hack individuals and businesses.

Objective of Phishing

The object of these cyber criminals focuses entirely on getting the information of the user. Phishing is a procedure through which hackers collect personal data of the user by sending them emails that are “too good to be true” kind and users are tricked. With this method, users share bank details by clicking on the link provided in the email. The thing that makes phishing different is the kind of message that is sent to the victim, it sounds reliable. This trick is amongst the oldest tricks, but it is still used by hackers widely. There are a few ways to stay safe and protected from phishing attempts. These preventive steps are mentions below;

Preventive Measures for Phishing

1 – Make Spellchecks Your Habit: It is often observed that emails that are sent as a tool for phishing usually bear names with wrong spellings. The spelling of the URL might look similar but will never be exact, so keep an eye on the URL before sharing sensitive information.

2 – Carefully Examine the URL: There are cases where the URL directs targets to websites that are similar in design but the URLs redirect users to some different websites. Carefully examine the URL and don’t get scammed.

3 – Practice Due Diligence: While reading an email, there’s always a gut feeling that makes you ponder upon whether to believe the message or not. If there’s any such feeling, or otherwise, always contact the source from which the email is sent to you. If anything seems suspicious then take a step back and practice due diligence for your own safety.

4 – What’s Private, Must Be Kept Personal: In the age of social media, it has become very common to share personal details on various social networking sites. People share their sensitive information like date of births, email addresses, cell numbers and similar details quite openly; stay away from doing that. Keep your personal information private, if you don’t want to become a victim of phishing.

5 – Follow Pen testing: Pen testing is a strong and effective tool that can help you in finding the weak points in your system. With no weak points in the system, chances of phishing will be lowered and cyber-attackers will fail to find any entry point.

6 – Strengthen IT Security Department: It is always essential to keep your IT security team up to date, strengthen them. Provide them with training and courses that will not only benefit them but also safeguard the company’s data.

Phishing can destroy your reputation, and a damaged reputation is not good for any business. In order to keep your reputation safe you should consider these points, mentioned above. Cybercrime can be minimized if we increase the check and balances; by following rules and regulations religiously. Stay safe, stay protected.