Every company that wants to stick around in the modern age is certain to have a presence online in one capacity or another – it’s a major factor in having success as a business today and if your company doesn’t operate online then you’re almost certainly setting yourself up for failure, but along with the many positives and advantages of being setup online, there are also many dangers to look out for too. 

Knowing how to look out for those dangers and how to fight against them is vital to the safety of your company and it isn’t quite as easy as you’d think; modern phishing tactics are incredibly sophisticated and fool even the most technologically knowledgeable of us – check out the top ways to protect your company from fatal phishing attacks in our guide below!

But first, what is Phishing? It sounds complicated, but it really isn’t – it’s a fraudulent attempt at gaining access to sensitive data, or more, where criminals pose as other people or other companies using calls or emails that are designed to lure you and your employees in with realistic templates that look almost identical to the real thing. Whilst it might seem simple to avoid and you’re sat there thinking “I’d spot the difference”, it’s important to have the information you need to fight against the attacks when they do happen. Criminals will tailor their attacks to be culturally and seasonally relevant so they’re more believable and if they’ve managed to breach other people that you know, they can even pose as your friends and family; the dangers are real and the impact can be deadly if they aren’t caught early. 

One of the main reasons that these phishing techniques are so effective is because they target your company’s biggest weakness – the human error that each member of staff is naturally prone to. It’s human nature to want to win an iPhone or a holiday to New York, so if an offer that looks real drops into your inbox, it’d be incredibly difficult to not pursue the chance if you didn’t know the full extent of the dangers that they pose. Bob’s Business provides jargon-free training courses that can be tailored to your company’s specific needs and weaknesses, allowing you to target the training to where it’ll be more effective, helping you to create a culture of vigilance and proactiveness when it comes to cyber-security. Simulated phishing training gives you the ability to give your staff a hands-on attempt at spotting a phishing attempt, with a huge range of templates to choose from to make the email look as true-to-life as possible. Reports can be pulled from these fake emails so you can see how well your staff responded to the test and if the proper damage prevention protocols were followed.

Keeping informed on the latest techniques, thinking before you click, and having strong firewalls and antivirus software in place can help to filter out any phishing emails before they even hit your inbox, but if they’ve managed to find their way through, you need to know how to quickly dispose of the attack before it has the chance to cause issues – just one click is all it takes to cause serious harm and leave yourself open to huge security breaches.