Phishing awareness can help prevent serious threats
To combat cyber phishing, organizations today are adopting a multi-layered approach to email security that combines automated detection with phishing awareness measures.
A phishing virus is an email-borne attack that attempts to get confidential information like passwords, credit card numbers and other credentials from a user. Typically, a phishing mail message will appear to come from a trusted source like a bank, a credit card company, a shipping company or a social website. The recipient will be asked to visit a website and provide sensitive information, or to click on a link for a website infected with malware. Spear-fishing is a more targeted phishing attack focused on a specific individual or position within a company, using social engineering and background information to feign familiarity with the recipient.
Greater phishing awareness among employees can help to prevent phishing attacks. Phishing awareness training can teach users to spot details that may indicate a phishing threat, including misspellings and bad grammar, links that don't direct to the web address of the sender, web addresses that are slightly altered from well-known companies, and threatening messages that are out of character with standard communications from trusted sources.
For companies seeking an email security solution that combines phishing awareness with best-of-breed email security solutions, Mimecast offers an all-in-one subscription service for email security, archiving and continuity.
Improve phishing awareness with Mimecast
Mimecast reduces the cost and complexity of protecting and managing business email by providing comprehensive services in a cloud-based solution.
Mimecast promotes phishing awareness among employees through Dynamic User Awareness services. This phishing awareness tool helps employees become more aware of the risks of phishing and other targeted attacks. When clicking certain links in an email, users will see a webpage with information about the email they received and the website they are attempting to access. Users will be asked to decide whether they want to continue to website or abandon their visit. Prompting users to think before they click in this way helps to strengthen phishing awareness and to encourage employees to be ever vigilant as they read and interact with email.
Powerful defenses to support phishing awareness
In addition to phishing awareness tools, Mimecast offers a suite of Targeted Threat Protection services that automatically block access to potentially dangerous URLs and attachments. Mimecast scans incoming and archived email and prevents users from clicking on links deemed to be suspicious, based on Mimecast's threat intelligence. Mimecast also blocks potentially malicious attachments, preemptively sandboxing them or rewriting them to a safe format for immediate delivery to users. And Mimecast scans email for signs of impersonation fraud to prevent malware-less attacks like CEO fraud and whaling.
Learn more about increasing phishing awareness with Mimecast.