Almost half of them used phishing to obtain the passwords of users.
Highly targeted phishing campaigns against specific individuals or types of individuals are known as spear phishing.
It's important to be able to spot phishing in general.
For targets of spear phishing, it is even more essential to spot the telltale signs, as the damage done in these attacks tends to be greater.
Phishing is basically an online version of fishing-except instead of marine life, the goal is to lure gullible users to reveal passwords and personal information by clicking on a malicious link or opening an attachment.
While phishing is generalized in that one phishing email may be sent to millions of people, spear phishing is highly targeted.
In spear phishing, the messaging is carefully crafted.
Spear phishing messages are designed to be far more believable than generic phishing attempts, as they are based on data taken from the person's life and work.
Reconnaissance makes the phishing email, text or call very personalized.
Spear phishing vs. phishing: Identifying the differences.
Many of the red flags for potential phishing emails also apply to spear phishing.
What distinguishes spear phishing from regular phishing is that the message generally has a lot more detail and adopts a tone of familiarity.
The level of surprise and urgency is generally ramped up in spear phishing and often involves transferring money.
Phishing emails go to large quantities of people rather than to specific individuals.
A CEO's assistant might be targeted by a criminal who impersonates an email from the CEO. The hacker has been monitoring email messages and social media for months and knows that a big deal is about to go down at a point where the CEO is overseas, sealing the deal.
More cloud security coverage Protect your organization from phishing and spear phishing attacks.
There are several steps that organizations can take to protect themselves from phishing and spear phishing attacks.
A spam filter will catch up to 99% of spam and phishing emails.
Using a VPN also makes it more difficult for phishers to succeed by adding additional layers of protection to email messaging and cloud usage.
This technology adds a predictive approach, which can make a big difference in cutting down on phishing and spear phishing scams.
This Cyber News was published on www.techrepublic.com. Publication date: Tue, 06 Feb 2024 23:43:04 +0000