Many types of phishing scams are targeting businesses every day. The phishers intend to get the user’s personal and financial information for financial gains. According to cybersecurity ventures, there is a loss of $6 trillion annually due to an increased ratio of cybercrimes by 2021.
12 common Types of Phishing Attacks that can harm your business:
1. Deceptive Phishing:
It is the most common type of online scam. The user receives an email from a known sender with legitimate links with a sense of urgency to scare the user. Users must inspect the URL to check if it is redirecting to some malicious website. They should also look for grammatical mistakes and spelling errors throughout the email.
2. Spear Phishing:
This type of online fraud is most common on social media platforms; the victim receives an email with personalized information from the recognized sender. Security awareness training is essential to defend against this scam.
3. Business Email compromise:
The lower-level employee, especially from the accounting or finance department, receives an email from the sender pretending to be the company’s executive. The purpose is to get the funds to transfer into the scammer’s account.
4. Clone Phishing:
This scam involves creating a copy of a legitimate message; and sends it again to
the user with an excuse they are re-sending the original message or email due to an issue with the links in the previous one.
5. Vishing:
The attackers use social-engineering tactics in this type of fraud. The victim receives a phone call asking for his high-value data or funds. To defend this, avoid phone calls from unknown numbers and never give your personal information to anyone over the phone.
6. Smishing:
The victims receive an SMS asking for downloading a malicious app by clicking on the link sent to them via message. These text messages seem to come from legitimate resources.
7. Domain spoofing:
In this type of phishing, the attackers spoof the domain of an organization. The fraudulent emails seem to come from that official domain, or their fake website looks like the real deal.
8. Evil Twin:
The phishers create a Wi-Fi hotspot in this type of attack. The duplicated Wi-Fi hotspot looks like the real one. When the users connect to it, the attackers hijack their network traffic and steal their online account passwords.
9. Whaling / an intensive version of CEO Fraud:
The high-level executives of a company receive an email asking for corporate data and other sensitive information. The phishers select their targets carefully in this type of scam.
10. Pharming / DNS cache poisoning:
The attackers target the DNS server, which can compromise the URL requests of millions of web users. The victim may also receive an email with malicious codes
intended to modify the host files on the victim’s PC.
11. Watering Hole Phishing:
In this type of cyber-attack, the phishers identify specific websites that the company employees visit often. Then they infect one of these websites with malware. The purpose is to get access to the company’s network and business-sensitive data for financial gains.
12. HTTPS Phishing:
The victim receives an email containing only a link with no other content in the email body. The phishers use social-engineering tactics to get the victim; to copy and paste this link into the address bar of their Internet browser.
Final Thoughts:
It is necessary to train yourself to adopt email best practices to prevent yourself from being scammed. Companies should conduct security awareness training for employees and executives to protect against evolving phishing techniques.
