How To Prevent Phishing Scams: A Guide For Businesses

Phishing is a form of cyber crime where cyber criminals send spam messages to individuals and organisations. These messages contain malicious links encouraging targets to click links to spam websites or download malicious software.

Phishing messages were commonly emails, but have since grown to include text messages, deceptive websites, phone calls, and social media posts.

The UK government’s Cyber Security Breaches 2024 survey found that phishing attacks are the most common type of cyber breach, affecting 84% of businesses and 83% of charities.

Forbes also states that phishing is one of the most effective types of cybercrime, as over three-quarters of account takeover attacks begin with phishing. With this in mind, businesses should take steps to identify and prevent phishing scams from occurring, to avoid costly stages later on.

If you’re wondering how to prevent phishing scams, you’ll need to understand what phishing attacks look like, then take on key strategies to safeguard your company against these breaches.

Let’s explore this in more detail.

How do Phishing Emails Work?

Phishing attacks involve social engineering, where cyber hackers form a type of communication which appears to be from a trusted, legitimate source.

The target receives seemingly legitimate emails, or other types of communication. The sender tricks the target into providing confidential details on a convincing website. The target’s computer may also receive ransomware or malware downloads onto their computer.

Phishing criminals often use strategies which involve curiosity, fear, urgency, or greed to encourage victims to click malicious links or open spam attachments.

Anyone can be a phishing target, as hackers target multiple email addresses to increase their chances of successful attacks. A single successful phishing attack is enough to steal important company data and compromise your business network.

How to Identify a Phishing Attack

Hackers use texts or email messages to attempt to steal account information, passwords, or employee data. If they access this information, they could gain access to your company’s email or bank accounts, or sell your data to other scammers.

Hackers keep updating their strategies in response to modern trends, but you might see some common methods used with phishing messages.

Phishing messages regularly tell stories to trick targets into clicking links or opening files. An employee might receive an unexpected text or email that looks like it’s from a legitimate company, like a bank or online payment application.

Here are some examples of phishing messages to help you identify cyber threats:

Claiming suspicious log-in attempts or suspicious activity.
Links to make unexpected payments – which contain malware
Claiming you are eligible to register for government tax refunds
Issues with payment or account information.
Urgent need to confirm financial or personal details
Coupons for free products
Emails containing fake invoices

Real businesses may communicate via email, but they won’t send texts or emails which contain links to update payment details.

Common Phishing Attacks that Affect Businesses

There are different types of phishing attacks which can affect businesses of all sizes.

Business Impersonation

A common phishing attack affecting business security that involves hackers impersonating your company. This is usually done with an email linked to a domain similar to the target business, like john.smith@microsoft-support.com.

Spear/Targeted Phishing

Spear phishing is a cyber threat tactic which uses a false business name, as well as important details about the victim.

The scammer finds employee names, their job position, and other personal details, then includes them in an email. These details make the email seem more legitimate, which can lure targets into a malicious trap.

CEO Fraud/Whaling

Phishing scammers can obtain the email credentials of high-profile individuals, which puts management and executive teams at risk.

The hacker uses email addresses from high-profile individuals to target colleagues, other teams, and potentially customers.

At Net Consulting, our VIP threat monitoring service is tailored to focus on security threats faced by high-level individuals. It involves proactive steps to foresee and counter sophisticated attacks that general cyber security protocols may not address.

You can find out more about this service on our VIP Threat Monitoring page, or our other cyber security services on our website.

Voice Phishing/Vishing

Scammers can call targets on the phone using tools to disguise their identity, like VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) servers.

These voice or VOIP phishing calls use pre-recorded messages to impersonate a real source, or use voice cloning to imitate the voices of people targets may recognise.

Vishing attacks are dangerous because a successful attack almost always causes great financial loss for the target.

How To Prevent Phishing Scams Affecting Your Business

Though phishing scams are common, there are steps you can take to prevent phishing from affecting your business.

1. Train Employees To Identify Phishing

Your staff are your business’s first line of defence against phishing attacks. Training employees to spot phishing attacks is a great way to prevent them from occurring.

Look for courses from professional security awareness organisations to ensure staff are up to date with the latest hacking techniques. Have your employees repeat security assessments frequently to refresh their knowledge and understanding.

2. Use Strong Email Security Strategies

Use secure email gateways or spam filters to prevent deceptive emails from reaching your employees. These scan and monitor incoming emails for fraudulent or spam content.

If these tools identify malicious content, they will prevent them from reaching an email inbox, improving enterprise security.

Spam filters, anti-virus tools, and gateway email filters can help stop malicious emails from reaching your staff members.

3. Multi-Factor Authentication

If a colleague gives a scammer important information, multi-factor authentication measures decrease a scammer’s ability to obtain access to an employee’s work email account. This gives you more chances of identifying and responding to security breaches promptly.

4. Create A Culture of Security Awareness

Fostering open communication about security issues, encouraging staff to report incidents, and implementing a zero-trust approach to cyber security can help build a security awareness culture within your business.

Increasing awareness of the significance and signs of phishing attacks means your employees can identify attacks, are less likely to fall victim to phishing, and can flag and report security issues so you can contain the event in time.

Phishing scams pose significant threats to businesses of all sizes, but fortunately, there are proactive measures, like the steps above, that can help defend your organisation.

We hope this post helped you understand how to prevent phishing scams from affecting your business.

At Net Consulting, our Compliance & Vulnerability Assessment helps organisations measure their cyber-attack risk, including the threat of phishing attacks. We can help you assess security risks facing your company, and then form an action plan to address these problems, keeping your business secure.

To discuss your security needs with us, call us at +44 (0)29 20972020, or check out our services for more about what we do.