What You Need To Know Spear Phishing

Spear phishing refers to the act of stealing sensitive data like financial information or account details from a target or specific victim. This is done by getting the victim’s details like the places where they go to regularly, employer, hometown, friends, and even the items that they have recently purchased online. The cybercriminal will then disguise themselves as a trustworthy entity or friend to get sensitive data, generally through online messaging or email. Spear phishing is the most prevalent and successful way of getting sensitive information on the internet.

How Is Spear Fishing Different From Phishing

Some people think that spear phishing is the same as phishing since both of them are carried out online on users with the objective of getting confidential information. Phishing’s cover is much broader. It refers to any attempt that tricks unsuspecting victims into giving out their confidential information like usernames, passwords, and even their credit card information for despiteful reasons. The attackers often do all these under the guise of a reliable entity and get in touch with their target through phone calls, social media, and email. They can even do these through text messages.

Phishing attacks aren’t personalized compared with spear-phishing. Phishing attacks are sent to a large number of individuals simultaneously. The objective of phishing is mainly to send out a fraudulent email or other forms of communication that appears as it came from a legitimate organization to masses of people, hoping that someone would click on the link included and download malware or give up their confidential information.

On the other hand, spear phishing attacks focus on a specific target and the messages sent out are customized to address their victim specifically, supposedly coming from a familiar entity and including personal information. Spear phishing needs more time and thought than phishing in order for it to become successful. The attackers will attempt to get as much confidential data about their victims as they can to make the emails the will send out appear legitimate and to boost their chances of deceiving their recipients. Thanks to the personal level of such emails, it is harder to pinpoint spear phishing carried out at a wider scale. This is one of the primary reasons why spear phishing are becoming much more prevalent.

How Does Spear Phishing Work?

The process used on spear phishing may seem pretty simple but the emails sent out for this purpose have evolved throughout the years and have becoming harder to detect especially if you don’t know anything about spear phishing protection.

The victims are those who put their personal information on the web. They look for individual profiles when they’re surfing social networking sites. From a single profile, they will find a person’s friends list, email address, geographic location, and even new gadgets he or she may have recently purchased. Using all these data, the cyber attacker will be able to act as a familiar entity or friend to send out a fraudulent but convincing message to their victim.

To increase the success of the attack, these messages may contain explanations why sensitive information is required. Victims will then be asked to click on a certain link or open a malicious file, which will take them to a spoofed site where they will be asked to provide their account numbers, passwords, access codes, and pins.

How To Avoid Spear Fishing Attacks?

Be careful of the information that you post online. Check your profiles on the web. How much confidential data is available for cyber attackers to see? If you’ve posted information that you want them to see then remove it right away.

Use smart passwords. It’s not enough to use different passwords. Your passwords must contain random phrases, letters, and numbers that are by far the most secure.

Don’t forget to update your software and avoid clicking links in emails. You should also use logic whenever you open your emails. Set up a data protection program at your business.

If you are not sure what to do or how to protect your business not only from spear phishing but other online threats as well, then call SpartanTec, Inc. right away.

SpartanTec, Inc. Columbia, SC 29201 (803) 408-7166 http://manageditservicescolumbia.com/

cities served:
Columbia, West Columbia, Cayce, St Andrews, Lexington, Oak Grove