How to Recognize a Phishing Attack

With email being such a significant part of doing business, phishing has become a popular tool of many scammers. To fight back, it is critical that you know how to recognize a phishing email, so we’re dedicating some time to doing just that.

What is Phishing?

Phishing goes beyond just your email; the term actually covers any digital attempt that someone makes to trick you into revealing imperative information about your business or personal accounts. A scammer would try to fool you into handing over a particular detail about yourself, like the password you use for your online banking, or your business’ client and personnel files.

Naturally, this kind of fraudster doesn’t have to use email as their preferred phishing tool, but many of them do. With social media becoming such an integral part of business and personal life, phishers will pose as people you know and message you to try and extract information. Others will just pick up the phone and call you as someone else, hoping you won’t question them and hand over the information they want.

These different methods that a scammer might use can even classify the attempt into a more precise type of phishing. Attacks that are highly customized to one particular target are called spear phishing attacks, and there are all types of different phishing attacks, usually identifying the type of medium used to phish a target. 

Regardless of what kind of phishing it is, it ultimately relies on deception to work, more than any other factor.

Catching a Phishing Attack

Luckily, while some phishing scams are becoming more elaborate, there are a few practices that can help prevent you from being fooled. Here, we’ve put them together to give you a simple guide to avoiding potential phishing attacks. There are plenty of warning signs to help you recognize a phishing attack. Some are found in the body of the email itself, while others are actually based a little bit on behaviors. For instance:

Is the message filled with spelling and grammar issues?

Think about it this way: does it look good for a business to send out official correspondence with these kinds of avoidable errors? We aren’t referring to the occasional typo, rather the tone of the message as a whole. It certainly does not, which suggests that the message may not be legitimate.

Is the message written to make you panic about something?

Consider how many phishing messages are framed as something you immediately have to handle or there will be serious consequences. While there are a variety of ways that people can be convinced, these types of messages hit on some major ones: 

• Striking quickly to keep people from questioning you.
• Removing power from someone who wouldn’t listen to you.
• Using very definitive and final terms. 

There are more, but a phishing message will aim to make you anxious. Does the message do these things? Does it suddenly alert you to a terrible issue that only the sender can protect you from? If so, there is a good chance that it is a scam.

Is the message a typical occurrence in general? 

Finally, think about the average case when a message like this is received. If you were to suddenly get a message on social media from someone who you really don’t talk to, it’d be a little weird, right? The same goes for your business communications. Getting messages from unknown or random people is always a red flag.

Protecting Your Assets

Fortunately, there are a few simple ways to help reduce how effective these attacks can be.

• Utilize a spam blocking solution to help reduce the number of phishing messages your employees need to deal with. While many phishers have become more sophisticated, plenty are still keeping it simple enough to be stopped automatically.
• Make sure your employees are trained to spot and properly handle attempts that may come through. By starting with the end user, you’re taking away a lot of the power that phishing has.

At Macro Systems, we appreciate the importance of secure workplace practices. If you’d like to learn more about phishing, and how we can help stop it from hurting your business, give our IT experts a call today at 703-359-9211.