What helps protect from Spear Phishing?

Last Updated on 2 years by Touhid

In spear phishing attack, attacker hack sensitive information from a specific victim, organization or business for malicious purposes. The information’s are very much important such as passwords, usernames and credit card details. In this post, we will discuss What helps protect from spear phishing?

What helps protect from Spear Phishing?

What helps protect from spear phishing? We have mentioned some important tips in order to protect from spear phishing attack, which are described in next para. Spear phishing is an email or electronic communications attack that attempt to unauthorized access and steal sensitive information from a specific victim.

In this attacking technique, attacker sends an email or online messaging to victim and includes some personal data of victim’s such as: name of the victim, company information, email address and contact number. Attackers collect the victim’s information from victim’s friends, hometown and what they have recently bought from online.

The reason for include these type of information is to gain victim’s confidence, therefore disguise themselves as a trustworthy friend and access the confidential data through email they(attacker’s) are looking for.

Tips to protect from Spear Phishing

Now, we should take some preventive measures to protect from spear phishing. Here are the eight (8) tips that will help protect you from spear phishing attack.

1. Don’t Click Links in Phishing Email
2. Update Operating System and Software
3. Educate your employees to protect spear phishing
4. Don’t Open Suspicious Email
5. Block Emails Address to protect spear phishing
6. Enable Two Factor Authentication for login
7. Use Strong and Smart Passwords
8. Provide Information on Trusted Site

1. Don’t Click Links in Phishing Email

If you receive a suspicious email with link from an organization such as your bank, then don’t click on link. A suspicious or phishing e-mail message may contain a link to redirect you to a vulnerable website to hack your sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, financial information and login credentials.

In that case, you can check the destination of the link by hover your mouse over the link. If the link does not match the link of emails and destination link then there has a chance to hack your data. You should also ensure and check the link is come from your bank and check the link (domain) is valid?

Tips

Maximum spear phishing attackers send malicious link to victim. The link look like as legitimate link but if you check the link very carefully then you can see that the link is malicious link.

2. Update Operating System and Software

What helps protect from spear phishing? It is strongly recommend that update your operating system (Microsoft, Apple, Linux) and software systems with the latest security patches and drivers in order to protect from spear phishing attack.

If your operating system and software systems (such as antivirus) are up to date that should help to protect you from cyber-attacks. We know that older version software may have vulnerability in source code and when a new version of software is released you should update the software immediately.

Tips

• Go to Start > control panel > system and security > click on Windows Update.
• In the left pane, click Check for updates, and then wait while Windows looks for the latest updates for your computer.
• If updates found, click Install updates.

3. Educate Your Employees to protect Spear Phishing

It is observed that, cyber attackers are successful and can get unauthorized access into your system because of employee knowledge and error. It is very important for every organization to educate their employees to protect from spear phishing attack.

So, every organization should organized workshop and training program on cyber security. The workshop and training program may include the following issues:

• Cyber security and its importance.
• Different types of cyber-crime.
• How to protect from cybercrime?
• What is Phishing attack? Different types of phishing attack.
• What helps protect from spear phishing?
• Email and Data security.

You may talk to your employees about phishing and other scams with preventive measures. These are the best way, for how companies can protect from spear phishing attack.

4. Don’t Open Phishing Email

If you receive an email which looks suspicious or phishing email then don’t open it. A suspicious email may contain a virus, malware or phishing link to redirect you to a vulnerable website in order to hack your sensitive information.

So, if you want to protect from spear phishing attack then don’t open the suspicious email and never click on the phishing link.

Tips

• If you want to avoid spear phishing email, just delete any email that raises confusion.
• In addition to simply deleting the email, you can also mark it as spam, or as suspicious.

5. Block Email Address to protect Spear Phishing

If a spear phishing attacker sends phishing email from a specific email address then you should block the sender email address immediately. If you block the phishing email address then messages will go to your spam folder or marked as spam. 

You may click the following link, here we have shown you how to block emails with Gmail for different devices such as computer, android, Iphone and Ipad.

Learn More How to Block Email Address?

6. Enable Two Factor Authentications for login

Two–factor authentication (2FA) or two–step verification is a security process which adds an extra step to the login process. If your username and password is compromised by spear phishing attacker then the attacker can’t get access your account without your physical device. Two–factor authentication is used for better protection and only legitimate users can access the account.

7. Use Strong and Smart Passwords

Cyber security expert recommended that use a strong and smart password in order to protect from spear phishing attack. To secure your online account creates a very strong password and change the password on a regular basis (i.e., Between 30 and 180 days).

• Password length should have at least 10 characters.
• Password must have combination of uppercase letters (A – Z), lowercase letters (a – z), numbers (0 – 9), and special character (@, #, $, %, ^, (,), &, *!).

Tips

• For example:Rt$nmL&9p%@7 is a strong password.

Learn More How to create and secure a strong password?

Do not use one password for multiple accounts because if an attacker gets access to one of your account (password) then attacker can get all other accounts. Every password should be unique and different from all others account.

For example:

• Email account –> Use unique password
• Face book account –> Use unique password
• Bank account –> Use unique password

8. Provide Information on Trusted Site

When you need to provide your personal information for the purpose of online shopping or any other reasons then you should ensure the website is trusted and secured by SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificate.

You should carefully visit the unsecured websites because an unsecured website may have malicious code.

Typically, in URL, you can see that a website domain name start with https:// instead of http:// such as: https://cyberthreatportal.com/

Finally, Spear-phishing is a social engineering attack that attempt to steal sensitive information such as account credentials or financial information from a specific victim for the purpose of malicious reasons. We have discussed about “What helps protect from spear phishing attack”. We hope that, these tips will be helpful for you to protect from spear phishing attack.