What tools can you use to stop phishing attacks?

Whether you are at home or work, phishing attacks are common and most times they are annoying and easily seen through. But every now and again they’re are breaches attacks that one can not plan for. Recently the FBI had been a victim of such an attack. Hackers gained access to an FBI email and sent out phishing emails directly from the FBI. These emails passed through most if not all Spam filters and disrupted many businesses. So even when the legitimacy of certain emails can be called into question, how do we prevent calamity? There so much to cover with this topic we narrowed down 4 key tools that can stop Phishing emails.

1. Advanced email protection

If a phishing email does end up in your inbox and you accidentally open it. There is a way to help protect yourself from malware downloads. By enabling link protection you can effectively stop phishing attacks. With link protection the program will automatically scan the emails links and block ones it considers malicious. This can protect quite a few phishing email issues, however it is not infallible. As it can not block every single malicious link.

2. Intrusion Prevention and Detection Systems

Firewalls will do a lot to prevent a malware attack from happening on your system however when malware attack does occur it is important to have the failsafe’s. Using intrusion detection and prevention systems will allow you to find and eliminate the attacks on your systems. Stopping them from expanding and taking controlling of your whole system. The only issue with these systems is that they are not as effective at finding new malware or malware that remains undetected for a long time. So while this is a good aspect to have for defence it does not cover all the important bases.

3. Flow-Based Network Detection and Response (NDR)

Using NDR security professionals can detect suspicious traffic, and analyze/block malware that makes it through other security systems. According to Gartner, NDR systems work by applying “machine learning and other analytical techniques to network traffic” and it “is helping enterprises detect suspicious traffic that other security tools are missing.” Making NDR an important tool when considering security.

4. Cyber Security Training

Having training may seem redundant and not apparent as a security tool. But having Cyber-Security awareness is an important defence to phishing attacks. Studies have shown Cyber risks are reduced by 70% when organizations provide cyber security awareness and training for their employees [Source].

These tools are just the beginning

With these four tools you can have robust security… But you can have all knowledge and resources in the world and still encounter problems if the training and monitoring provided by your internal or external IT security team isn’t up to par. Check in with your provider, or contact Britec if you are looking for some independent opinions.

There are many more aspects to Cyber-Security than just these four tools but narrowing down these tools can help put into picture some of the important aspects to defend from phishing attacks.