One of the hardest forms of cyber attacks to fend off is spear phishing campaign because it resorts to various vectors and often takes advantage of what is known about a victim’s work or private life in order to create a profile of the target before launching the attack.
These pieces of information could be collected from social media accounts such as Facebook or LinkedIn so that the job and/or relationships of the targeted victim is established. Then the attacker is able to craft a seemingly legitimate campaign that reflects real situations of a potential victim’s life. This is significant because the spear phishing campaign will then have greater chances of luring the victim to click through messages that are actually deceitful.
In order to effectively fight spear phishing campaigns, you must have a robust defense infrastructure, centralized cybersecurity measures, a strategic threat intelligence approach and streamlined security system.
Cyber attackers have been using spear phishing for years because, while it is the most difficult to ward off, it is also the easiest method to gain entry into a network or any other critical infrastructures that have anti-malware installed in them.
For Internet-based businesses, a data breach due to phishing attacks would jeopardize the reputation of a company, in addition to the loss of data, tainted customer trust and regulatory penalties.
One sure defense mechanism to fight spear phishing is a consolidation and synchronization of how you detect and respond to this form of cyber attack. This means users must be able to view real-time threat data, security sensors always on the alert mode and end points constantly ready for whatever circumstances may arise. This guarantees a speedy response to spear phishing attempts at your enterprise.
But the effort should not just stop there. Having a proper training on combating spear phishing attacks is just the frontliner meant to keep attackers at bay. Furthermore, it is not enough to depend only on your endpoint security software to do all the tasks of fighting the attacks. Additional sensors must be put in place to shore up your cyber defenses. This will enable the detection of possible phishing attacks even before they take place.
Additional methods include whitelisting applications on your devices in order to prevent zero day attacks from targeting your system because it blocks unauthorized execution of codes and secures memory.
Following these methods will help you to counter targeted spear phishing campaigns against your personal device or business.
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