There are various vectors through which cyber-attacks are being performed and understanding their fundamentals is vital to effective prevention.

 

A significant volume of cyber-attacks is reportedly delivered through social engineering.

 

Phishing is a broad term and has different types, such as, but limited to, email phishing, voice phishing, SMS phishing, and malicious advertisements.

 

Email phishing is the most common social engineering attack. An attacker generates emails containing a very sophisticated human psyche approach to entice the victim. This phishing email

would look like a legitimate email but contains hidden malicious codes.

 

A user who is unaware of phishing attacks may think of it as a legitimate email and, thus, click on the embedded link in the email or open the attachment. Either of these will execute the hidden malicious code and infect the system and/or spread it in the local network.

 

Phishing attacks could lead to ransomware attacks, bots, fake webpage for data theft, or other application or network-level malicious infection.

 

While there are different security tools like Anti-spam, Anti-virus, Anti-malware, and similar applications, attackers are coming up with more sophisticated code that can, many times, bypass the security inspection. Hence, along with other network security measurements, user awareness and readiness to prevent phishing attacks are of utmost importance.

 

Security experts suggest that every organization should run a phishing awareness and readiness campaign to educate their users of such potential attacks, essentially them avoiding opening links or downloading attachments from suspicious sources.

 

An anti-phishing campaign helps users to remain vigilant of their cyber-security responsibilities and also keeps them updated on recent attack vectors.