What Is Phishing?

Phishing is a type of a social engineering attack that involves manipulating human psychology to trick individuals into disclosing confidential information. Typically executed via email, social media, or instant messaging, phishing attacks are difficult to stop and costly to remediate. 

Understanding phishing and its mechanisms is crucial for protecting your sensitive data and enhancing your cybersecurity defenses. This post reveals the definition of phishing, its main types, and effective practices to prevent it. 

What are phishing attacks?

Let’s start with the meaning of phishing. The term “phishing” is a homophone of the word “fishing”. During a phishing attack, cybercriminals use bait — often in the form of tempting offers or urgent requests — to lure victims into providing their sensitive data, such as usernames, passwords, credit card numbers, or bank account information. 

Cyberattackers behind phishing attacks often send fraudulent messages that appear to be from banks, government agencies, or trusted individuals. The goal of such messages is to trick the victim into visiting malicious websites, filling out fake forms, downloading malware, or revealing sensitive information through other channels.

How does phishing work?

Phishing works by playing on human emotions. The attacker creates a sense of urgency, curiosity, or fear to encourage individuals to take immediate action without thinking critically. Here’s a breakdown of how phishing attacks typically occur step by step:

1. Preparation. The attacker creates a deceptive message, typically in the form of an email or text that mimics a trusted entity. This message may contain a request for sensitive information or an urgent call to action, such as “Your account will be blocked unless you verify your information”.

Attackers can also use social media to gather a particular victim’s personal details, work history, and interests to craft a personalized message.

2. Delivery. The phishing message is sent to an individual or a group of individuals, who may be random or specifically targeted people. 
3. Engagement. Victims who fall for the bait either click on a malicious link or provide their sensitive information to cybercriminals.
4. Exploitation. Attackers then use the information obtained to compromise accounts, steal identities, install malware, or carry out fraud. They can also sell sensitive data on the dark web or exploit it to gain access to an organization’s IT systems.

Although phishing attacks often involve some combination of these steps, not all attacks are identical. Below, we discuss the most common types of phishing attacks.

Main types of phishing attacks

Phishing comes in many forms, each with distinct tactics and objectives. Some of the most common schemes include:

Email phishing. This is the most common type of phishing, where attackers send malicious emails that appear to be from trusted sources like banks or popular services. These emails usually contain links to malware or fake websites created to steal personal information.

Spear phishing. This type of attack targets specific individuals or organizations. Attackers research their victims to craft more personalized and convincing messages that appear to be even more legitimate than those involved in a typical phishing attack. 

Whaling. Whaling takes spear phishing a step further, targeting senior executives or decision-makers within an organization. The stakes in these attacks are higher, as they often involve hefty sums of money or proprietary information. 

Smishing (SMS phishing). This tactic involves sending malicious links or instructions via text message. Unlike email services, which often have built-in spam filters, SMS messages don’t undergo filtering, which makes smishing attacks rather effective and widespread.

Vishing (voice phishing). In vishing, attackers use phone calls to trick individuals into providing personal or financial information. These attackers may pretend to be tech support workers, bank assistants, or government officials requesting that the victim urgently provide some type of sensitive information.

Pharming. In a pharming attack, the attacker redirects the victim to a fake website without their knowledge by exploiting vulnerabilities in the domain name system (DNS). Even if the victim types the correct website address, they are unknowingly redirected to a fraudulent site designed to capture login credentials, personal information, or credit card data.

Regardless of the type of attack, phishing poses a significant threat to organizations, often leading to severe consequences if not properly addressed.

Below, we’ve outlined the most effective methods for preventing phishing attacks and minimizing their impact on your organization.

How to prevent phishing

Preventing phishing attacks requires a comprehensive approach that involves both technical measures and human participation. Here are some of the most effective practices:

Conduct employee training

Conduct cybersecurity awareness training regularly so that your employees know how to recognize phishing attacks and respond to them responsibly. Train your employees to treat every email as a potential phishing attempt and always scrutinize the sender’s details, unusual call-to-actions, and suspicious attachments. You may also want to simulate phishing attacks among your employees to ensure that everyone is staying vigilant.

Keep your software up-to-date 

Phishing attacks can be especially damaging if your software isn’t up to date. An outdated browser, for example, may not have the latest security features or may be susceptible to unpatched exploits, which increases the risk of falling victim to malicious websites or scripts. 

Always ensure that your software, including browsers and operating systems, is up to date to minimize vulnerabilities that cybercriminals could exploit during phishing attacks. 

Limit access privileges

Implement the principle of least privilege by ensuring employees have only the minimal level of access they need to do their jobs. If some of your employees fall victim to a phishing attack, the attacker’s ability to access critical systems and assets will be limited. Regularly review and adjust access privileges as employees’ responsibilities change. 

Implement multi-factor authentication (MFA)

Enable MFA to enhance the security of your critical accounts and systems. Implementing MFA ensures that even if an attacker manages to obtain credentials through a phishing attack, they will still be unable to access your systems without completing the additional authentication steps. 

Use a password manager

Use cybersecurity solutions to manage passwords. With some password managers, your employees won’t need to manually input passwords, which significantly reduces the risk of successful phishing scams. Choose password managers that can automatically change passwords on a regular basis, thus limiting the window of opportunity for attackers who may have acquired passwords through credential-stuffing attacks. 

Prepare an incident response plan

An incident response plan can help you effectively manage phishing attacks. Your incident response plan should specify immediate actions to respond to phishing attacks such as isolating compromised systems to prevent further damage and notifying affected parties to mitigate the impact. Additionally, you should define the main steps for containment, eradication, and recovery from phishing attacks.

Syteca is a reliable provider of privileged access management and user activity monitoring solutions trusted by Visa, Samsung, Panasonic, and other global companies. Our cybersecurity platform can help you enforce two-factor authentication, granularly grant access to your critical endpoints, optimize workforce password management, get visibility into user actions, and timely respond to suspicious activity.

With Syteca PAM and UAM, you can quickly identify and mitigate any attempted phishing attack, therefore protecting your sensitive data and strengthening your overall cybersecurity posture.