Phishing is not a new phenomena; it has long been the most prevalent attack vector for hackers. However, as phishing scams become more complicated, learning how to recognize a phishing email is more vital than ever.
Despite advancements in anti-virus protocols and detection technology, the quantity and severity of phishing assaults continue to rise. In today’s cyberwar environment, everyone is a target, but by training your employees to recognize phishing and respond effectively to phishing attempts, today’s targets can become tomorrow’s key defense sentinels.
Understanding a phishing Email is the first step of recognizing it
A phishing email is one that is sent to a recipient with the intent of getting them to execute a specified task. To make their email appear authentic, the attacker may employ social engineering techniques, such as including a request to click on a link, open an attachment, or disclose sensitive information such as login credentials.
The most harmful are socially engineered phishing emails. They’re made to appear real and relevant to their intended audience. The recipient has a higher level of trust in the email and completes the task specified in it. It’s possible that the consequences will be catastrophic. An attacker can get unnoticed access to a corporate network if the recipient clicks on a link to a malware-infected website, opens a malicious attachment, or discloses their login credentials.
Examples of phishing Email
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Legitimate businesses do not ask for critical information over email
If you receive an unsolicited email from an organization that includes a link or attachment and requests sensitive information, it’s probably a fraud. Most businesses will not send you an email requesting passwords, credit card information, credit scores, or tax identification numbers, nor will they provide you a login link.
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Legitimate businesses will normally address you by your first name
“Dear valued member,” “Dear account holder “or” Dear customer” are common salutations in phishing emails. If a corporation with whom you do business needed information concerning your account, the email would address you by name and most likely direct you to call them.
However, other hackers just do not use the salutation at all. This is especially true in the case of advertisements. It’s almost perfect in every way.
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Domain emails are used by legitimate businesses
Don’t only look at the person’s name that sent you the email. Hover your cursor over the ‘from’ address to see their email address. Make sure there haven’t been any changes (such adding more numbers or letters). Take a look at the differences between these two email addresses to see how they’ve been altered: [email protected] [email protected] Keep in mind that this isn’t a perfect procedure. When sending emails, some firms employ unique or diversified domains, and some smaller businesses use third-party email providers.
Five Ways to Detect Phishing Email
Due to their sophistication, socially engineered phishing emails frequently elude detection by email filters. They have the necessary Sender Policy Frameworks and SMTP restrictions to pass the filter’s front-end checks, and they’re rarely delivered in bulk from blacklisted IP addresses to avoid Realtime Blackhole Lists blocking them. They can even elude detection from powerful email filters with Greylisting features because they are often individually created.
Phishing emails, on the other hand, have a lot in common; they’re usually designed to elicit emotions like curiosity, pity, fear, and greed.
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Emails requesting immediate action
Phishing emails frequently threaten a negative outcome or a loss of opportunity unless immediate action is taken. Attackers frequently use this tactic to compel recipients to act before they have had a chance to examine the email for defects or contradictions.
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Emails with grammatical and spelling errors
Another indicator of phishing is poor grammar and spelling. To ensure that outgoing emails are grammatically correct, many companies use spell-checking programs by default. Web browsers with autocorrect or highlight functions are used by those who utilize browser-based email clients.
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Emails with an Unfamiliar Salutation or Greeting
A casual salutation is commonly used in emails between coworkers. Those that begin with “Dear” or contain terms not commonly used in casual conversation are likely from sources unfamiliar with your company’s workplace interaction style and should raise suspicion.
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Email address, link, and domain name inconsistencies
Finding anomalies in email addresses, URLs, and domain names is another approach to detect phishing. Is the email from a company with whom you’ve had a lot of contact? If this is the case, compare the sender’s address to earlier emails from the same company. Hover the mouse pointer over a link to see what pops up to determine if it is real. Report an email as a phishing attack if it appears to come from (say) Google but the domain name is something else.
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Suspicious Connections
Collaboration solutions like SharePoint, OneDrive, and Dropbox are now used for the majority of work-related file sharing. As a result, internal emails with attachments should be regarded with caution – especially if the extension is unexpected or is usually connected with malware (.zip, .exe, .scr, etc.).