How Phishing affects Businesses

Phishing is a technique in cyber society, to obtain sensitive data by impersonating oneself as a trustworthy entity. Phishing is much like fraud.
Phishing has a list of negative impacts on businesses. It includes loss of money, loss of reputation, and disruption of operational activities.
To understand the entire effect of phishing, we need to understand some common types of phishing scenarios.

HISTORY OF PHISHING
In The ’90s, some programmers used fake messages to capture sensitive data from targeted clients. In 2001, phishers turned their attention to online payment systems. Although the first attack was on E-Gold in 2001, which was not considered to be a successful one.

At the beginning of 2004, Phishers were riding an immense phishing wave that affected some banking sites and their customers. Between 2004 and 2005, around 1.1 million users in the U.S. suffered because of phishing. After some period of time, phishing is fully and officially recognized as a part of a black market.

Types of Common Phishing Attacks in a present scenario

Phishing is carried out by Email spoofing, Instant Messaging, and text messaging. It is a deceptive way to obtain personal information from the targeted person.

1. Phishing Email: Phishing Email is still compromising a large sector of the internet it is the simplest and easiest form to get access or personal information because right now non-techy people don’t check that much authorization of mail. This is How Email makes phishing so simple. Even though it is very easy for script kiddies or we can say beginners in cyber security.
2. Vishing: Vishing is a short form of “Voice Phishing”. In vishing, attackers try to pretend to be a trusted one like family, friends, or some office colleagues, etc. They just get some information from the victims and use that information to gain an advantage.
3. Smishing: Smishing is the oldest one but we can say most compatible technique if we have personal contact with the victim. Smishing is a phishing Technique that works via text messaging or SMS.
4. Whaling: Whaling is a technique of phishing where the attacker targets senior executives or we can say the person who holds big positions in companies are the target of an attacker. Because they have more deep access to companies information through which attackers can gain more access to data.
5. Evil Twin Phishing: Evil Twin Phishing is used in Wi-Fi where attackers create the same network with the same name so the victim gets connected to that network this is how Evil Twin Phishing works.

Some Common Effects of Phishing on Businesses

1. Loss of data: Loss of data is a major effect on each and every Business, which spends a lot on the security of the data but due to some negligence companies have to suffer from a lot of loss. It also ruined their respect and trust in the market because of a simple mistake.
2. Loss of Customers: Loss of Customers gonna affect a company a lot. After a data loss or data get compromised customer thinks about their privacy and customers don’t use that company again. A UK survey revealed that more than half of consumers stop using hacked organizations.
3. Financial Penalties: Financial Penalties are again a big thing for a company after getting hacked. When sensitive information of the consumers gets compromised then the company has to face a huge penalty because there are many policies like GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI DSS which may attract a huge fine
4. Loss of Company Value: Here is the main thing that comes in when companies face attacks and get compromised. The company loses its company value in the market which may affect businesses a lot.

How Businesses can avoid Phishing attacks

Businesses can avoid phishing attacks in several ways. Some of them are listed below :

1. Using some anti-spamming software and extensions which may indicate to the user’s lives that the website or link employees are using is good or bad based on phishing records of the domain in the past.
2. Keep your software updated which may also prevent it from getting compromised.
3. Never respond to spam emails or text messages.
4. Use anti-spam filters extension or plugins in the mail which can easily identify spam mail.
5. Do not download or open an attachment that is attached in the mail avoid opening them until the sender is known.
6. Check poor grammar and spelling errors. Because senders never focus on this basic like big giants or small businesses focus on their mail content.
7. Set up two Emails one is public and one is private so no one affects you that much.

As per the Phishing Box data , 36% of all data breaches occur due to phishing attack , 46% organizations or businesses receives malware via E-mail which is a big number and big problem for every user who are using internet in their daily life.

As we know the businesses are trying hard to secure their company from phishing attack. So, It is very tough to stay secure from phishing attacks for simple user who don’t know that much about phishing and all the attacks.