In 2020, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center noted more than double the number of phishing cybercrime cases than all other types of cybercrime combined.

Phishing is a serious cybersecurity threat. Now, it is equal to DDoS attacks, data breaches, and other types of malware. Advanced whaling attacks targeting executives and email scams perpetrated by cybercriminals are used to deceive people. What they are trying to do is to make people disclose sensitive information.

Learning how to recognize phishing attacks and seeing the signs of it can protect you. Some simple red flags include urgent calls to action, suspicious email domains, or grammatical errors that would let you know something smells.

In this article, I will be talking about common phishing techniques. You will learn how to recognize them and step up your preparedness against several evolving cyber threats that are evolving.

What is phishing in cyber security?

One of the biggest cybersecurity problems that organizations and people face today is phishing. A phishing attack tricks people into revealing sensitive information or taking actions that put their security at risk through deceptive communications.

Unlike technical faults, phishing uses the psychology of man instead. They don’t focus on the network infrastructure directly, but they make people hurt themselves or their organization without their knowledge. Phishing is dangerous because even the strongest technical defenses can be bypassed by human error.

IBM’s cost of a Data Breach report reveals that phishing is the leading data breach vector, with 15% of all breaches. On top of that, the cost of breaches caused by phishing is USD 4.88 million per organization on average.

How Phishing Works:

  • Impersonation: Attackers pretend to be someone a victim knows well, for example, a colleague, an authority figure, one’s boss, a brand, etc.
  • Communication: They communicate using email, text, phone, social media, or websites to send fraudulent messages.
  • Manipulation: They use psychological tricks such as urgency, fear, or curiosity to make victims do specific things.
  • Exploitation: Attackers use links and infected attachments to prey on victims, gaining access to systems or accessing sensitive information as a result.

The term “phishing” first appeared in the mid-1990s when hackers used spoofed emails that entered phish for data from unsuspecting users. At first, these attacks were simple scams in chat rooms, but they have become much more sophisticated.

Phishing attackers range from individual scammers to organized criminal gangs. It goes after everyone, from lower-level people to companies and even government agencies. A major example of a case where Russian hackers used a fake email to reset a password and stole thousands of emails from Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign in the US.

Phishing is effective because of human nature: we will trust others, and we will be curious or react emotionally to urgent messages. It is cheap and easy to do, so cybercriminals prefer using phishing.

Primarily, phishers just want to get their hands on valuable user data, such as personally identifiable information (PII), login credentials, financial data as well and sensitive business information. This stolen data is then used by the criminals to commit identity theft, credit card fraud, monetary theft, extortion, or account takeovers.

Phishing is usually an entry point to larger attacks. If cybercriminals succeed in this attempt, they will have enough access to cause massive data breaches.

The most common types of phishing attacks

However, to protect your digital assets, you have to understand different attack types. There are many ways cybercriminals steal personal and business data; they adapt their tactics and use a combination of them. In this post, we will go into the most usual phishing attacks that you may experience.

Email phishing

The most common of all the phishing attacks is email phishing, which works more like a numbers game. Thousands of fake messages are blasted, and one success is all that attackers need to get results that count. A hacker hit back at Sony employees, stealing over 100 terabytes of data via LinkedIn. These attacks copy legitimate email templates in order to create urgency. They are trying slightly misspelled domains or adding extra subdomains, which look real but other times take the victims to dangerous sites.

Spear phishing

While regular phishing is a general email spam targeting the general public, spear phishing targets people in particular organizations and within them specifically. To make believable messages, the attackers research their victims’ names, their job positions, and their contact details. This is why spear phishing is such an effective way of phishing. This constitutes simply 0.1% of all emails but was responsible for 66% of data breaches during a 12-month period. One employee received a fake employee handbook requesting personal information in which an attack was targeted.

Smishing

In smishing attacks, scammers use SMS text messages. Dangerous links are sent to them in text messages that are supposed to look like bank or real service alerts. Scammers impersonating American Express sent urgent messages to trick victims into fake sites posing as the company built to steal personal information. This makes smishing a better method, as people tend to trust text messages more. Users respond to 6% of the emails they receive, but 45% of the texts they receive.

Vishing

Vishing (voice phishing) is based on phone-based deception. Scammers pretend to be tech support, bank staff, or government agents. That is, they try to create panic or fear in order to get the sensitive details from victims. In 2019, UK parliament members and staff were the victims of a major attack as part of a bigger campaign that sent 21 million spam emails. The danger of vishing comes from voice calls because people trust a phone conversation.

Quishing

Quishing attacks are a newer type of phishing that makes victims visit via QR codes to dangerous websites. These codes lead users to fake sites that seem real. Quishin, therefore, introduces unique security risks due to the fact that it often requires two devices: one that has to receive the QR code and the other that scans it. During three months, security experts found over half a million phishing emails containing QRs in PDFs. 51% of these attacks were aimed at Microsoft, 31% at DocuSign, and 15% at Adobe.

How to identify phishing emails and scams

To escape the phishing attacks, you have to identify whether the bait or the bite is real. Scams get more sophisticated every day, and your best defense to spotting suspicious messages is knowledge.

The process of first step of spotting phishing begins with the sender’s details. Corporate domains are used by legitimate businesses, not public email services such as Gmail or Yahoo. To confirm an email address, you should hover over the sender’s name to see the actual email address. Be wary of slight misspellings (amaz0n.com instead of amazon.com) or, while not common, look for any unusual domain extensions (.org instead of .com).

A lot of phishing messages are written in an urgent manner. Bad intentions are indicated by threats of what will happen if you don’t act immediately - that’s a red flag. These scammers are trying to get you scared by saying something such as suspicious account activity or a payment information problem.

Before any clicks, links need to be carefully inspected. Where links really lead, you should be able to see the link when your cursor hovers. If the shown text doesn’t match the actual web address, then the link is suspicious. The same applies to strange attachments; real companies don’t just send random files out of nowhere.

Phishing attempts are signified by bad grammar and spelling. If real companies have professional writers and editors, then there should not be obvious mistakes. But not all, as AI now makes the looks of the phishing emails perfect, so don’t rely on good grammar.

Avoid generic greetings like ‘Dear Customer,’ ‘Hello User,’ etc. Real companies use your name and know it. It also flags red when someone asks for passwords, credit cards, Social Security numbers, or anything like that in an email because no legitimate business would ever do that.

The design tells a story, too. Messy formatting, wrong brand elements, fuzzy logos, or other signs of poor execution indicate fraud. Real emails follow clear visual standards that match the company branding.

Note that when something seems off, reach out to the company through their official channels instead of responding to the message.

Protection against phishing attacks

A combination of technology, awareness, and innovative practices is the best defense against phishing attacks. These protective measures can reduce your vulnerability to many types of phishing attacks by a lot.

Use VPN

Phishing is one of the reasons why you should use a Virtual Private Network, which protects you from that by encrypting your data and hiding your actual IP address. Although hackers might make attempts to intercept your connection, they won’t have access to your sensitive information. There are built-in malware and phishing protection features that come with quality VPNs; these warn you about suspicious websites and block dangerous redirects automatically. If you have to connect to public Wi-Fi networks, your data will require extra protection, and in this case, VPNs provide that secure tunnel.

Technical safeguards to implement

Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) protocol adds value to your email security. This protocol keeps building on top existing security framework and aids in the detection of fake sender addresses. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is an essential security measure that requires an extra verification check apart from the password. MFA validates accounts by denying unauthorized access to accounts even when passwords are stolen, as confirmed by CISA.

Ensure that the security updates to all the software and operating systems are kept current. Phishing-related malware is spread through unpatched vulnerabilities by hackers.

Behavioral practices for prevention

Phishing protection is based on security awareness training. Investing in this training provides 70% fewer social engineering attacks than those that do not. Before opening suspicious emails, you should check the identity of the sender and avoid clicking embedded links. The safest way to do this is to type the URL directly into your browser.

The golden rule is always to verify first. Before taking any action, make sure you double-check out-of-the-box requests from trusted channels.

Tools and Software for Phishing Protection

Anti-phishing software helps in the inspection of incoming communications. Advanced detection algorithms are used in these tools to identify and prevent malicious content before it reaches the users. AI-propelled email security studies communication patterns to catch cunning phishing attempts, including those that take advantage of information generated from generative AI.

Phishing simulation platforms assist companies in professionally testing employees’ awareness and creating targeted training programs. It is proven that a simulation-based training program reduced an organization’s phishing risk from 30% to less than 5% in just 12 months.

Conclusion

You and organizations are all threatened by phishing attacks, so that’s why it’s important to have one of the best cybersecurity awareness. You need to know different phishing techniques. Some are as simple as an email scam; others are more advanced spear phishing attempts. Help you spot and avoid these threats.

Cybercriminals keep improving their methods. Technical safeguards and smart online behavior are the keys to your protection. Regular software updates and the usage of VPN and anti-phishing tools provide strong defensive barriers. In addition to that, it can even make it possible to check sender details and verify suspicious links as well as verify unusual requests. All these habits lower your risk by a lot.

You need to understand that phishing prevention never ends. Once you stay alert, keep your security tools updated, and know how to stay safe from new types of attacks, then your sensitive information stays safe. By consistently practicing security and awareness, you can shield yourself from most phishing attempts and won’t lose your digital safety.

FAQs

What are the most common types of phishing attacks?

The most common types of phishing attacks are SMTP (email phishing), SPEAR (spear phishing), SMS (smishing, SMS phishing), VOICE (vishing), and OQ (quishing (QR code phishing)). Different ways are used to trick victims into giving sensitive information or doing harmful actions.

How can I identify a potential phishing attempt?

Passive or unusual language, particularly in terms of urgent tone, poor grammar, impersonal greetings, and requests for sensitive information, are also red flags to look out for. Ensure your identifiers are always verified, and always be cautious about emails with links. If you see something off, reach out to the organization directly via their official channels.

What technical measures can I implement to protect against phishing?

Encrypt data with a Virtual Private Network (VPN), practice with multi-factor authentication, keep all software and operating systems up to date, and even have specialized anti-phishing software. In the case of organizations, the DMARC protocol can be set, and also use of AI-powered email security can add more protection.

How effective is employee training in preventing phishing attacks?

Phishing prevention is dependent on employee education. Security awareness training reduces the number of social engineering attacks in organizations that implement it. The training programs, which are based on simulation, have reduced an organization’s phishing vulnerability from 30% to less than 5% after 12 months.

What should I do if I suspect a phishing attempt?

Try to identify if it is possibly a phishing attempt. If you suspect it, do not click any links or download any attachments. Notify your IT department or authorities about the suspicious activity. In addition, you should independently verify any strange request through recognized means before taking any action.