Phishing & vishing attacks: Steps to protect your business!

More businesses have fallen prey to cyberattacks in the last five years than ever before. Even small businesses and startups have been impacted severely, and a lot of it has to do with phishing & vishing. When it comes to security concern protection, your business needs to find ways to tackle both these threats, and in this post, we are sharing more on how to protect your business better. 

Understanding the basics

For the unversed, a vishing attack is when a hacker or scammer tries to trick the victim into giving sensitive information over a call. A similar kind of social engineering attack can happen over text messages too, which is known as smishing. There is also phishing, which is when a hacker attempts to get information from a user over the email. In most cases, the hacker is trying to manipulate the user, which can be in form of urgency, or often by showing greed. The lottery scams still happen, and people do fall prey to such emails. 

Should you worry about your businesses?

Phishing & vishing attacks typically are targeted towards employees, and to err is human. In other words, your business will have to deal with these cyber threats time and again, no matter what kind of company or operations you have. Both phishing & vishing may mean compromising on security, and the management has to take steps to prevent the same. 

Steps to consider – 

  • Train your employees. This is easily the most important step for protecting your business against cybercriminals. You have to ensure that your employees know of common threats, including phishing & vishing, and they must know the kind of response they need to have for such emails and calls. 
  • Invest in a spam filter. Spam filters are useful for finding phishing and scam emails, and some of the better ones can even find emails that contain malicious downloads. Make sure that your employees have one installed on personal devices used for work, as well. 
  • Use an antimalware software. There are different kinds of antimalware and anti-phishing software, which can be considered for small business use. Find one that is also effective against trojans. 

Finally, focus on the basic steps, like multifactor authentication, and restricting access to company IT resources. It takes the whole organization to prevent phishing & vishing attacks, and everyone has to be involved in their respective roles. Check online for more ideas on antimalware and other protective programs.