Phishing attacks are one of the most common fraud attempts to circulate places of business. The concept is simple: send a message from a hacked account that looks friendly and include a link. Then wait. Eventually, someone will receive the email, click on the link, and boom. Mission accomplished.
Once you click on one of those links you are subjecting your computer to an array of viruses and putting your personal data at risk.
What is worse, if you are subject to one of these attacks one of the first things it will try to do is duplicate itself by sending a message out through your email, to all of your contacts.
More and more people are exposed to the dirty links, and more and more people fall for it.
If this happens on your company computers it can be devastating. Your company can risk losing important confidential information, and can risk releasing client information—all of which can put your company at risk of major financial liability.
How to Stop a Phishing Attack
The best way to stop a phishing attack is to first, prevent it by working with a skilled IT group, but secondly by educating your employees on how to detect and manage phishing attacks when they happen in real life.
More than ¾ of companies in the United States have experienced phishing attacks. Whether you are a small business or you have thousands of employees, it is likely to happen to you. The time to think about an attack is before it happens. This is the best way to prevent your company from losing information and money to attackers.
You can stop phishing emails from achieving their goals by educating your employees about these attacks. Basically: If you see something weird, don’t click it.
Many phishing scams will look like a request for a gift card or will say it is a link to a funny website that you can’t miss. If the email seems out of left field or you aren’t expecting to hear from someone, don’t click on any of the links. If you know the person, check in with them before you click it to make sure they really sent it. If you don’t know the person, definitely don’t click the link.
Working with a fraud prevention software can help to stop phishing attacks as they happen. If someone clicks on a dangerous link on a computer that is equipped with fraud protection, they are going to hit a firewall that tells them the link is dangerous. In most situations this is enough to prevent the fraudulent link from being successfully opened.
Cybersecurity and Small Business
It’s no shock when a well known, enterprise-level business falls victim to a cyberattack. Big assets equal big targets and, for the criminals, potentially enormous payoffs. But small and medium businesses (SMBs) are just as likely to be targets.
Part of that is just the nature of doing business in today’s world, where companies run on networked machines, valuable data is everywhere and reputations can be lost in an instant. And it’s partially because too many businesses underestimate both the tenacity of hackers and their own vulnerability levels.
According to research commissioned by cybersecurity company BullGuard, nearly 60% of SMB owners believe their business is unlikely to be targeted by cyber criminals; that same study, however, revealed that 18.5% of SMBs experienced a cyber attack or data breach within the past year.
The Importance of Having an IT Policy and Security Plan
Cyberattacks can have a devastating impact on businesses. Downtime can cost your business hundreds or thousands of dollars an hour in repair costs and missed productivity, while the loss of sensitive company or client data can be even more costly – often forcing a business to go out of business completely. You need a plan to defend your business from bad actors, but you need a policy to protect it from within as well.
Work with a skilled and trusted IT Company
Working with a skilled IT company can help you make sure that all of your employees are practicing safe communication on the internet and are avoiding links that could lead to phishing scams. That is where we can help you. Fastech Solutions is an all-in-one company that provides Managed IT as well as web design and SEO, keeping your company up to date and safe all at once. We provide a wide array of cyber security solutions throughout the Vancouver and Portland areas. It would be our pleasure to help you as well. Contact us today to learn more about our services!