Spear phishing attacks are like regular phishing attacks, only a lot more insidious.
An ordinary phishing attack usually involves sending out a spoof mass email that tries to trick a whole bunch of people into giving out their personal information or clicking a website link that dumps viruses and ransomware into your systems.
Spear phishing, on the other hand, tries to trick just one person—namely, you.
Owing to its generic nature, ordinary phishing is relatively easy to spot and dodge. For example, you receive an email from a name-brand bank frantically alerting you that your account has been compromised and advising you to please log in via this “special” supplied link to reset your password. Problem is you don’t have an account with that bank. So, duh, obvious scam.
Not so obvious, however, is a spear phishing attack because it utilizes information relevant to you. For example, drawing on publicly available or illicitly procured details of your life, phishers can convincingly impersonate people in your circle to gain your trust and get you to do their ruinous bidding.
To tell whether an email purporting to be from people you know is legit or a trap, you (and your entire team, for that matter) should sign up for spear phishing detection training.
Plenty of training courses are available, but the best ones spread the instruction over multiple short lessons and make use of fun-infused storytelling techniques to memorably impart information (as opposed to a half-day day-long seminar laced with dry, dull, and largely forgettable PowerPoint bullet-style presentations).
The most effective training programs also provide detection practice using actual spear phishing emails rather than hypothetical, lab-concocted examples.
Looking into spear phishing detection training is something you should put at the top of today’s to-do list.
Google around, or you can get this right from BobaGuard. With built-in cybersecurity training, advanced AI-based phishing protection and more, we can help you quickly address the threat of spear-phishing (and a whole lot more).
