Advising users not to click on bad links simply doesn’t work. There are genuine reasons why they might click a bad link, and even if there isn’t we can hardly hold users accountable unless the link is screaming malware at them
🔴 Fact: Your users may need to click unfamiliar domains to do their job
🔴 Fact: Identifying phishing attempts almost certainly doesn’t form part of their job description.
🔴 Fact: Your users may be reluctant to flag a phishing attempt once they have activated it for fear of embarrassment, which then delays your incident response.
🔴 Fact: Cyber criminals only need to get lucky once to access your network.
So how do we protect our business and our users?
Some phishing attacks can look entirely genuine; however, you can mitigate the threat to your business by employing multi-layer security.
☑️ Employ Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) such as DUO to protect not just access to your own systems, but also online software as a service (SaaS) systems
☑️ Use a good Password Manager like Keeper (which supports MFA) throughout your business; This will enable you to use and share strong secure passwords with 256-bit AES and PBKDF2 encryption
☑️ Reduce Phishing emails by using email security which scans and protects against ransomware and malware. If your email is in Office 365, Avanan is the leading cloud native AI enabled email protection system, which adds an additional layer to Microsoft security.
☑️ Consider adding a label to all incoming email which warns your users that they come from an external source. This greatly reduces social engineering attacks that seek to impersonate a colleague or executive within the organisation.
☑️ Talk to your It provider about ensuring DMARC and SPF are in place to reduce spoofed emails.
☑️ Use a strong endpoint protection product to protect your physical and virtual devices
☑️ Ensure all systems are patched up to date, this ensures you have removed vulnerabilities from older software.
☑️ Consider using a Security Operations Centre service (SOC) which can identify issues for you and deal with incident management and recovery
☑️ Ensure that users understand that they never enter their corporate log-in credentials into a web page without first getting confirmation from their support desk or technology provider.
☑️ Create an environment in which your staff aren’t embarrassed to report that they have clicked on a suspicious link in error, in fact make them understand they will be praised for raising the issue swiftly
A good multi-layered approach to your data security increases the amount of protection in place and reduces the likelihood that your users will be in a position where they can click that malicious link.
In addition to the multi-layer approach, passing the government led Cyber Essentials security audit will ensure you have good technical controls in place to protect your business
For assistance with your own business protection, call usl on 020 78715555
