What is Phishing Prevention?

Everyone knows what fishing is: an attempt to catch fish with some kind of bait you think will trick the fish into taking a bite. In the world of cybersecurity, the term “phishing” is inspired by this very same concept.

Phishing is a type of cyber attack where bad actors use deceptive tactics (i.e., bait) to trick individuals into revealing sensitive information, such as usernames, passwords, or financial details.

A typical phishing attack involves getting the victim to click on a malicious link or download and open a file, whereupon the victim’s device will become infected with malware, or the victim will be directed to a clone of a trusted website and prompted to enter their login credentials.

However, phishing can take various forms, including email phishing, spear phishing (targeted attacks on specific individuals or organizations), and smishing (phishing through text messages). It is essential for individuals and organizations to be vigilant, learn how to recognize phishing attempts, and take measures to protect against deceptive tactics by adopting proven phishing prevention techniques.

The motivations for phishing attacks vary widely, but often attackers are after valuable user data, such as personally identifiable information or login credentials that can be used to commit fraud or access the victim’s finances. In some cases, they may be trying to steal research, financial data, or health records from an institution.

For organizations of all sizes that need to protect sensitive data at scale, Duo is a user-friendly solution that can help you prevent phishing attacks — on behalf of all your users, devices, and applications.

Phishing typically employs emails or instant messages that appear to be legitimate, combined with imposter websites, to make bogus requests for personal details such as names, passwords, Social Security numbers, or credit card and bank account numbers.

Unfortunately, as more and more mobile devices enter our lives, it's still relatively easy for hackers to deceive users into revealing their personal information. They can do this by creating fake websites, sending fraudulent messages, and exploiting vulnerabilities to gain unauthorized access to user credentials — and these methods are a fairly straightforward and often effective tactic for cybercriminals.

Common types of phishing attacks

Email Phishing – Email phishing is conducted by sending mass email campaigns imitating a legitimate source to steal sensitive information from a broad group of people. The goal is to trick recipients into giving away sensitive data or downloading malware onto their systems.

Spear Phishing – Spear phishing uses reconnaissance and social engineering to collect personal information about a specific individual, such as a target organization’s employee. Attackers use this data to pose as legitimate users, then infiltrate networks and steal sensitive data, install malware, or steal credentials.

Whaling – Whaling is a type of spear phishing attack that targets high-level executives. Attackers often use personalized emails to trick targets into providing sensitive data or making financial transactions. Obviously, whaling is particularly concerning because executives tend to have more social leverage and direct access to valuable data within highly visible companies.

Phishing attack breakdown

A phishing attack often takes the following order:

1. Reconnaissance – Stalk potential victims on social media to discover vulnerabilities (for instance, find out where they work, where they live, what interests they have, and so on).

2. Weaponization – Craft an attack plan based on vulnerabilities from information gathered.

3. Delivery of attack – Send fraudulent emails, social media messages, or text messages based on vulnerabilities. These can contain malicious links or attachments and often alarmist content to drive a sense of urgency.

4. Exploitation – Steal credentials and personal information via fake portals that the victims were directed to.

5. Monetization – Access the victims’ financial assets with harvested credentials then sell, siphon, or ransom off stolen data or assets. This is what drives many attackers to go to the trouble of setting up an attack.

With a few best practices and security tools in place, you can achieve phishing resistance, prevent unauthorized access, and avoid becoming a victim of phishing attacks.

Implement strong user authentication

To significantly reduce the risk of unauthorized data access, require multi-factor authentication (MFA). Using WebAuthn or FIDO2 security keys provides the highest level of assurance for secure access. Additionally, Verified Duo Push can provide an extra layer of security by requiring users input a unique code from the login device in the Duo Mobile app.

Reduce reliance on passwords with single sign-on (SSO)

SSO serves as a unified visibility and enforcement point for application-specific policies, while also enabling seamless access to multiple applications with a single set of credentials. With fewer credentials to remember, users are less likely to reuse or create weak passwords that can easily be targeted by hackers.

Maintain a detailed device inventory

It’s hard to prevent access from devices you don’t know about. Visibility into all the devices accessing your resources is a key step in ensuring every access attempt is legitimate.

Verify device trust

With many different devices accessing company resources, it’s important to ensure they’re all healthy and up-to-date. Compliant devices are less likely to create gaps in security, making them more difficult for hackers to exploit.

Enforce adaptive access policies

Ensure that the right users, with the right devices, are accessing the right applications. By creating granular security policies, you can enforce a least-privilege access model and ensure that users and their devices meet rigorous standards before they can login to critical resources.

Continuously monitor for unusual login activity

Utilize behavioral analytics to monitor the unique access patterns of your users. This practice helps you spot suspicious activity — and stop breaches before they happen.

The main cause of phishing is the malicious intent of cybercriminals who aim to exploit individuals and organizations for personal gain. Phishing attacks are driven by various factors, and attackers use deceptive tactics to trick people into divulging sensitive information.

Here are some key reasons behind the prevalence of phishing:

Financial motivation – Cybercriminals seek to obtain financial information, such as credit card details or login credentials, to commit fraud, steal money, or engage in identity theft.

Technology vulnerabilities – Vulnerabilities in software, browsers, or email systems can be exploited by attackers to deliver phishing messages and create fake websites that appear legitimate.

Ease of execution – Phishing attacks are relatively easy to execute compared to more complex cyber threats. Even unskilled attackers can use phishing kits, pre-designed templates, and automated tools to create convincing fake websites and emails.

Anonymity – The anonymity provided by the internet allows attackers to operate with reduced risk of identification and prosecution. This makes it challenging for law enforcement to track and apprehend phishing perpetrators.

Anti-phishing tools are solutions designed to detect, prevent, and mitigate phishing attacks. These tools employ various techniques to identify and block phishing threats, helping individuals and organizations protect themselves from deceptive tactics used by cybercriminals.

Here are some of the common tools and principles that go into an effective anti-phishing strategy:

A Multi-layered approach

Anti-phishing solutions utilize both security software and human practices to prevent and remediate phishing attacks. Email filtering systems can analyze incoming emails to identify and block phishing attempts. Web security gateways monitor web traffic and block access to known phishing websites.

Phishing protection solutions

You need software that provides advanced phishing protection, strong user authentication, granular device visibility, adaptive access policies, and login monitoring. Endpoint protection solutions include anti-phishing features that detect and block malicious activities on individual computers and mobile devices. MFA solutions add an extra layer of security by requiring users to provide multiple forms of identification before accessing systems and data.

Employee awareness

Employees are an attacker’s most common target, which also makes them your first line of defense. Educating your employees on how to recognize and avoid suspicious emails or links is a good first step in helping to prevent phishing attacks — and many organizations implement their own training platform that provides educational content and simulated phishing exercises to train individuals on how to recognize and avoid phishing attacks.

To be better prepared for cyberattacks and prevent phishing, you need to begin by building security resilience. Resilience requires the capability to manage any kind of change, whether positive or negative. This is because security resilience, as a concept, aims to provide confidence and certainty that threats can be met head-on anytime, anywhere — and successfully countered.

There are three main principles behind security resilience that must be upheld in order to prevent phishing:

Prevent – Identify and stop threats before compromise. Reduce the attack surface with multifaceted prevention techniques, risk-based vulnerability management, and posture assessments.

Detect – Proactively hunt for hidden threats, detect stealthy malware, and perform advanced investigations with actionable global threat intelligence. This can be achieved by partnering with experts like our Cisco Talos threat research team, as well as running complex queries to gain unprecedented visibility into your endpoints.

Respond – Engage a powerful toolset that is easily deployed to help identify infected endpoints and understand the scope of an attack. In addition to multiple prevention and detection capabilities, Duo’s Trusted Endpoint approach offers granular endpoint visibility and response tools to handle security breaches quickly and efficiently.