Email Fraud Discovery and Prevention – Top Phishing Attacks of 2016

In this series of blog posts we have examined the most common forms of email fraud and phishing attacks and appropriate countermeasures to protect both individuals and organizations.

It’s important to remember that any organization that uses email is vulnerable to a phishing attack that can be used to intercept valuable information or commit financial fraud. The last year has been particularly tough for organizations with major brands and government agencies suffering attacks.

The Email Fraud Outlook

The outlook for email fraud and phishing attacks shows no signs that the situation is getting any better. In the next year, we’re likely to see more attacks designed to disrupt business operations. In addition, we’re also likely to see a rise in organizations that have never previously seen themselves in the crosshairs being targeted by non-traditional attackers.

Steps to Reduce Risk

Here are our top tips on how organizations can better protect themselves to reduce risk:

• Greater collaboration – be engaged with your industry peers and law enforcement to share data and experiences on attack

• Remember, it could be you! – plan for the worst case scenario, engage expert security industry support and fully exercise incident response teams regularly

• Know your strongest assets – adopt the mind-set of an adversary and review the data stored within the enterprise to ensure strong controls, such as encryption, are in place

• Introduce new controls – take advantage of advanced, multi-layered security technologies to minimize risk of susceptibility to attack

• Restore trust in the digital ecosystem – email continues to be the primary way criminals infiltrate an enterprise. Successful attacks feature identity deception at their core so companies need to change their approach and combine threat intelligence with open standards to ensure employees only interact with legitimate messages.

Download Agari’s executive brief on the Top Phishing Attacks of 2016 to learn more about best practices to stopping phishing attacks.

You can also check out the other posts in the Top Phishing Scams series:

• Ransomware
• Data Breach of Employee Information
• Business Email Compromise
• Consumer Email Fraud
• Hacktivism