Does Your Anti-Phishing Solution Really Work? Facing The Hard Truth

To say that phishing attacks are on the rise would be an understatement. The type, frequency, and sophistication level of these attacks continue to evolve and become more creative and dangerous. 

We constantly see market-leading companies such as Zoom and Netflix fall prey to phishing attacks, which can make businesses feel like they’ve lost the battle before it even started. Every headline announcing another phishing attack and the damage it caused adds to the sense of discouragement. 

But giving up is not an option with so much at stake. The fact is that most companies can do a lot more to stay secure and win this fight. It’s time to take a close, hard look at current anti-phishing approaches, understand what isn’t working, and make the change.  

Bigger Phish to Fry: The Outdated Approach to Phishing Protection

The good news is that most companies understand the need for an anti-phishing strategy. The bad news is that many of them suffer from an outdated approach that offers partial protection at best. 

For anti-phishing protection two critical elements need to be covered:

• Threat intelligence: Anti-phishing solutions must monitor all companies’ online assets to detect suspicious activity in the planning stages.
• Threat takedowns: Anti-phishing protection program should also include a takedown strategy, and takedown experts to almost immediate removal of any threat to your brand.

Unfortunately, we come across many businesses that rely on legacy solutions and focus solely on employee training. As security expert, Tessian CEO Tim Sadler stated, “While training is important in raising awareness, it alone is not effective enough to stop people falling for the scams we see today.” 

Cybercriminals are always improving and using increasingly innovative techniques, and their methods often take advantage of human vulnerabilities. That’s why companies must consider employees as their first line of defense against phishing scams. 

The combination of extensive training and legacy tech tools will still fail to offer sufficient, effective protection. Technology in the field must be regularly updated to handle the complexity of new and superior phishing threats. Cybersecurity and author expert Jason Rorie summarized it perfectly by telling businesses, “You’re at risk every single day that you refuse to upgrade your security systems.”

Anti-Phishing Protection Starts Here

A complete anti-phishing solution must be holistic and adaptable. It should offer the following capabilities:

• Analyzing multiple online platforms: Today’s online activity by businesses and customers takes place on websites, apps, and social media networks. Solid phishing protection takes into consideration each arena’s unique characteristics. 
• Detecting malicious digital activity: The solution must identify suspicious behavior according to the channel in question. 
• Discovering multiple threats: Companies need security solutions that can reveal phishing attacks, trademark infringements, online brand abuse, counterfeit sales and other threats.  
• Shutting down threats: It’s not enough to spot and report the threat. Solid anti-phishing protection handles the threat on the spot and prevents damage from taking place. 
• Ongoing monitoring of online entities: Cybercriminals don’t take breaks, therefore,  your security measures need to scan multiple platforms nonstop. 
• Adapting as phishing attacks evolve: The development process of security technologies is never over because the next threat is always about to emerge. The solution you choose should be future-ready and adaptable based on the next malicious methods, trending networks, and other rapidly changing factors. 

These are the building blocks of anti-phishing protection, and your business cannot afford to skip any one of these capabilities. Choose a solution that covers all angles of threats that may come your way. 

Any vulnerability you think you can live with will turn out to be the weakness exploited by cybercriminals to issue the next attack. If you want to dive even deeper and understand what each step entails, we invite you to take our Risk Assessment test.