Phishing attacks have been at an all-time high over the past two years. The COVID-19 pandemic forced many computer-based roles to work from home, meaning that more people were working from personal computers on their home Wi-Fi connections. This, plus the increased screen time, allowed for more cyber scams to take place. This problem may be due to a lack of cybersecurity literacy amongst the general populace, as a business will rarely spend more than an afternoon walking an employee through the do’s and don’ts of owning a sensitive device, especially before everyone was sent home during the pandemic. Rather, cyber attacks are for more insidious, happening under the radar, possibly showing no sign of a problem until it’s too late. One of the most common cyber attack methods (making up 80% of all cyber attacks) is phishing – when a seemingly inconspicuous link is sent from a seemingly ordinary email address, but when clicked on, can lead to any number of problems. Despite all the problems that can stem from phishing and other cyber attacks, many remote workers seem blissfully unaware. 39% of people say they have no problem clicking on suspicious links, with 56% of people being unaware of “SMiShing,” a similar cyber attack technique that involves asking for personal or financial information over text messages. However, in worst case scenarios, the scam program could find its way into extremely sensitive information, like personal employee details, ranging from addresses to bank details, or even confidential files, like a business’s finances.
How do you stop cyber attacks?
As for how to stop them, the sad truth is that cyber crime isn’t going anywhere. All we can do is adapt to the most common approaches used by phishers and do our best to avoid these scams when they do pop up. Some crucial tips to make phishing emails stand out:
Announce when company-wide emails are going out on a separate platform, like Slack or a company calendar. A common phishing method is to spoof an email so that it looks like an official email from the business itself in the hopes that employees won’t think twice opening itUse an email client like Gmail, which has extensive filters that stop phishing emails from ever reaching their targets in the first placeAsk your IT team, or an external team of cyber security experts, to put together a presentation about telltale signs of phishing in order to improve your business’s cyber security literacy
However, sometimes things just go wrong, so it’s nice to have a backup. Antivirus software can catch hacking/virus attempts before they get to work on their devious purposes, so installing these services on any vulnerable or sensitive devices could be a godsend for anyone worried about losing important info to hackers.
