Meta Description: This blog explains what phishing is, how to recognize it, and how ClipTraining’s phishing simulation training can help prevent cyber attacks.
There was a time, not long ago, when cyber attacks were as plain and simple as sharing a corrupted link. The user would click on it, thinking it might lead them to their desired webpage. Instead, they would land on a prompt, urging them to share their personal info to continue.
Fast forward to today, things have taken a turn for the worse. Technology is evolving, and with it, the pattern of cyber attacks is evolving too. Criminals and hackers have found more sophisticated techniques to bait the user and trap them into giving up important data.
Phishing is one such technique. Read on as we’ll explain what phishing is, how to recognize it, and how ClipTraining’s phishing simulation training can help prevent cyber attacks.
Let’s dig deep!
What is Phishing?
To tackle a threat, you need to understand it first. Phishing, in its simplest form, is a form of cyberattack in which a criminal pretends to be a legitimate entity in order to obtain sensitive information from the user.
Phishing attacks come in various forms, but the most common types are:
- Email Phishing
The user receives a fraudulent email that claims to be from a trusted source, asking the recipient to either click on a malicious link, download corrupted attachments, or share personal information.
- Spear Phishing
Spear phishing is targeted to a specific group or company. In this type of attack, the criminal impersonates a legitimate authority related to that company such as a CxO or an HOD, using personal information to increase credibility.
- Smishing
Smishing, or SMS phishing, is conducted via text or SMS. Since texts and SMS have their limitations about attached files, this type of phishing often comes with fake login links.
- Vishing
Vishing, or voice phishing, includes a scenario where an attacker calls the user to manipulate them into revealing information.
While there are numerous other types of phishing, these are the ones you are most likely to come across and, hence, should be aware of.
22% of Cyber Attacks Occur Through Phishing – FBI’s 2021 IC3 Report
How Phishing Attacks Work
Phishing attacks are planned with one goal in mind: to deceive its target. Therefore, they are executed with the utmost care and attentiveness. Here’s how a typical phishing attack works:
1: Attacker chooses a target, and gathers publicly available information about a company and its employees.
2: They design emails, messages, and scripts that appear to come from legitimate sources and have no hint of illegitimacy.
3: These messages are then sent to targeted employees of the company.
4: Employees who are not aware of a phishing attack fail to recognize this attempt, and end up clicking on a corrupted link or harmful attachment.
5: As a result, attackers gain access to company networks, which leads to data breaches and financial frauds.
How to Spot and Prevent Phishing Attacks
Phishing is tricky to avoid, but not for those who know how to spot it. Drop a few hacks so your clients know how phishing can be spotted and how employees can prevent it:
- Always verify the sender’s email address before clicking on any link or attachment. Phishers often claim to be a legitimate authority, but their emails give them away.
- Spelling and grammatical errors are common in phishing emails.Employees are likely to find a lot of missing commas, full-stops and misspelled words in a fake message.
- Be cautious of the urgent language. A phishing message will always be urging the users to take action as soon as possible.
- Before clicking on any link, hover over them first to check if they’re leading to legitimate websites. If not, it’s best not to click them.
- Whenever an unexpected request for personal credentials occurs, suspect that a phishing scheme is likely behind it.
- Never download any file or attachment from an unfamiliar email address.
- Invest in a phishing training course to teach the employees how to tackle such attacks.
Is Phishing Simulation Training Really Important?
No matter how many protective layers your clients use to prevent an attack, the employees are still the weakest link. A single mistake from an unaware employee can put an entire organization’s confidential data at risk.
This is why phishing simulation training is essential; it helps businesses protect billions of data and financial loss simply at a fraction of the cost. And there’s no better platform offering phishing simulation training and testing other than ClipTraining.
25.7% of the companies do not provide any IT Security Awareness Training at all – Hornet Security
ClipTraining Can Help Your Clients Stay Secure
ClipTraining has a comprehensive training module specifically designed to train employees on preventing phishing attacks. Our phishing simulation training includes real-life scenarios instead of just theoretical concepts, which makes this training fun, entertaining, and easy-to-grasp.
Core features
Here are the core features of our phishing training and testing:
1. Positive Phishing Testing
Unlike other training that simply feels like a mixture of graphics and phrases, ClipTraining takes a rather fun approach to training. It trains the employees by engaging with hyper-realistic simulations to test their cyber-vigilance. These simulations, resembles a game, leave a unique, positive mark on the employee, teach them what needs to be taught in a fun way.
2. Indicator-Centric
Our phishing training briefs on the major indicators that give a fraudulent email away. By mastering these indicators, any employee can spot a phishing attempt from a mile away. The key is to look for what they know about a phishing attack, not what they don’t know.
3. Automated Training
Our phishing training does not just end with indicators and one-time practices. To ensure the security of the organization, our automated system triggers a phishing simulation at any random interval to test the ability of the employees. This happens throughout the month, and by the end, an automated report is generated and sent to the designated email address to track progress.
4. Zero Effort
Here’s the feature that makes it one of the best phishing trainings for employees. Once enroll with ClipTraining, there’s nothing the client needs to do at their end. ClipTraining will take care of everything, from employee training and testing to evaluations and monthly insights.
Outcomes of a phishing training
As your clients benefit from ClipTraining’s phishing simulation training and testing, they are likely to see an improvement in employees’ cybersecurity awareness and vigilance. This mitigates the chance of attacks and ensures the company thrives with all the measures in place.
Here are a few outcomes your clients can expect with ClipTraining’s phishing simulation:
- The employees will be more vigilant towards cyber attacks and phishing attempts.
- The business will see an improvement in compliance to cybersecurity training and practices.
- The organization will have almost zero percent chances of falling into a phishing trap.
Get Started with ClipTraining
To start with ClipTraining is simple; all you have to do is visit our website and book a demo with our experts. To help you understand how ClipTraining supports MSPs in tailoring training to client needs, our dedicated teams are ready to guide you through a firsthand experience.
Let’s sum it all up, phishing attacks are real. Phishing attacks have happened every day to hundreds of businesses. And there’s nothing much anyone can do about them except to stay vigilant.
Building on this, ClipTraining offers a user-friendly platform that equips your clients with engaging phishing education through simulations, real-life scenarios, and interactive what-if situations. The result is a securer, safer business and well-trained, educated employees with a strong sense of cyber vigilance.
Book a demo with ClipTraining today and let our professionals take the burden off your shoulder!