Phishing Websites And How To Identify Them

Phishing is quite common. One of the blogs we had written before covered how email users could face bad consequences with the click of a downloading/opening of attachments or websites sent by phishers. In 2020, phishing attacks rose even more than it did the year before in 2019, where the attacks inclined by an immense percentage of 400 (%). This blog will cover a different type of phishing attack which will be disguised as websites.

1) Criminals Always Attack With New Tactics

Phishers like to break down their process. They’d often build and include fake websites in their phishing emails, with the aim of having people leak valuable personal information to the phishers, who have scammed millions of people over time.

Phishing Websites And How To Identify Them — Criminals Always Attack With New Tactics

2) What Are Phishing Scenarios

To help tackle phishing attacks, down below are some scenarios to help identify and avoid phishing sites and attachments.

1. Opening a phishing email
2. Clicking a suspicious ad
3. Accessing a fake login page
4. Engaging in social media

Phishing Websites And How To Identify Them — What Are Phishing Scenarios

3) How To Avoid Phishing Scams and Phishing Websites

The scenarios listed above are related to true attack stories that happened in real life. There are a few key tips to help you avoid these scams. Some of them are:

• Inspect the URL for the link before opening it. Fake links and emails contain unnecessary words and domains.
• Recognize the sender of the link. Is the source of the email known to you?
• Don’t enter any credentials and re-examine the URL.
• Look for a Trust Seal on the page, helps reassure that the website isn’t a fraudulent one.
• Look for SSL/TLS certificates in the address bar (supposed to be in green bars).

Knowledge about phishing attacks will help prevent them. If people are taught how to identify phishing emails and not fall for the scams, the chance of phishing attacks rising gets slimmer.

Phishing Websites And How To Identify Them — How To Avoid Phishing Scams

4) Having A Protected Email Security

In order to protect mailboxes against cyber attacks, different techniques are used to provide email security. Keepnet’s Email Security products provide multi-layered protection. It involves various procedures which are frequently used to stop phishing attacks. Email security can be compromised via many elements, the main 4 being:

• Email body
• Added attachments
• URLs found in the email
• Sender’s email address

Phishing Websites And How To Identify Them — Having A Protected Email Security

To prevent cyber-attackers from viewing sensitive information from email content, it is important to use automated email encryption, incident response tools and training employees on the safe use of email.

5) The Best Tools To Use

Information Security Training

Educate your employees about cyber attacks using information security training and other security training content.

Phishing Simulation

Use the latest simulation tools to test your employees with different phishing themes. Also, use a Phishing Security Platform.

Test Your Email Security

Test whether the email service you use is sufficient against current attacks. Trial your corporation by using anti-spam and Sandbox technologies as real attacks.

Use our Free phishing simulator for employees

You can use Keepnet free phishing simulator tool to test your employees’ phishing vulnerabilities and spot out phishing attacks for free.

Phishing Websites And How To Identify Them — The Best Tools To Use

Author: Rodi Kilic
Cybersecurity Researcher