What are the Best Anti-Phishing Solutions You can Use to Protect Your Email?

Phishing is a very common and often expensive problem that every email owner encounters at least once.

However, it gets even worse for business email accounts. According to Cybint’s 15 Alarming Cyber Security Facts and Stats report, as many as 62% of companies have experienced a phishing attack at least once.

Phishing, unfortunately, isn’t just one technique. If that were the case, it would be very easy to deal with it. Instead, phishing represents a whole array of different malicious techniques employed by cybercriminals with the intent to steal your data.

Some of these techniques or types of phishing include:

• Deceptive phishing. This is the most common type of phishing and one that most email users have seen at least once. In it, the attacker imitates a legitimate entity, for example, the bank, with the idea to fool the user into providing their information through a phishing link;
• Spear-phishing. This is a much more targeted version of phishing than deceptive phishing. Hackers that use spear-phishing first do a meticulous job of gathering information about their victim, especially through social media sites, before using a similar-looking email account to trick the email recipient;
• CEO fraud. This phishing scam, also known as “whaling”, primarily targets executives like CEOs, or someone in the company with access to company finances, and is used usually to either authorize a fraudulent money transfer to the criminal’s bank account, or to obtain the employees’ W-2 records.

In addition to these three email phishing techniques, there are also those that rely on DNS/IP (pharming), SMS/text messages (smishing) and phone (vishing).

What Anti-Phishing Techniques can Help You?

As you can see, there are a few phishing techniques that you need to worry about. A single spear-phishing attack has an average cost of $1.6 million, according to Keepnet Labs.

So, if you want to avoid the situation where your company loses millions of dollars due to a phishing attack, be sure to use these anti-phishing solutions and techniques:

• Educate and train your employees (and yourself for that matter) on how to recognize a phishing attack and how to respond to it. Use mock phishing scenarios;
• Have a clear and concise organization policy and procedures on how you handle customer confidential data, especially when it comes to sharing and backups;
• Report any suspicious email activity, even if it was a false alarm or the employee was able to handle things themselves;
• Make sure your login is secure by using encrypted HTTPS instead of the unencrypted HTTP connection. Also, be sure to use multi-factor login (adding a security code or token to the username and password);
• Use an antivirus program and spam filters to detect the same as well as a web filter against malicious websites;
• Use browser extensions and add-ons that prevent clicking on malicious links.

The Best Anti-Phishing Tools You can Use?

Having strong organization policies and educating employees on what to do in case they notice a phishing attempt is just one aspect of protecting your company’s emails from a costly phishing attempt.

In addition to this, you also need to employ the right anti-phishing technology.

We picked five of the best anti-phishing tools and software that you can use against it:

1. Norton

Norton is a widely recognized and respected name in the antivirus industry and it has been around since 1991. 

In addition to blocking phishing websites that can steal your personal information, Norton also removes malware, spyware and adware, protects your website by blocking malware downloads and provides real-time website protection.

2. McAfee

Another well-known name in the cyber-security world, McAfee has been protecting websites from viruses, malware, spyware and adware since 1994.

When it comes to phishing, McAfee’s strong anti-phishing protection prevents users from accessing fraudulent websites that can steal their personal information by redirecting the user to a safe page with info on the website and why it is dangerous.

3. Avast

When it comes to detecting malware, Avast has a stellar record and coupled with regular updates, this is a software that many cyber-security professionals wholeheartedly recommend, even though the earlier versions of Avast were less than accurate when it came to phishing.

4. Bitdefender

Bitdefender is perhaps not a household name in the cyber-security industry, but it is one that is quickly gaining recognition nevertheless, especially when it comes to anti-phishing technology.

If you are looking for a user-friendly anti-phishing solution with a clear and simple UI and a very good free edition, Bitdefender will be a good choice to protect your email account.

5. Total AV

Voted as the “#1 Antivirus” for October, 2020, by the Antivirus Software Guide, Total AV provides all the antivirus, phishing, malware, ransomware, adware and spyware protection a user needs, in addition to real-time protection for their website and email and over 25 million users and around 150,000 downloads per week speak for themselves.

Conclusion

Phishing can not only be annoying for an email user, but also very costly. Relying on your ability to detect a phishing attempt, or worse, the ability of your employees to do the same, is not enough to protect you against phishing attempts. 

Because of this, you need to start using some of these anti-phishing solutions to safeguard your email against malicious emails that are designed to steal your personal information.

When choosing an anti-phishing solution, always make sure that their anti-phishing database is regularly updated and is proactive.

At CTemplar we understand the dangers that malicious emails and phishing represents, which is why employ an anti-phishing phrase that will be shown in your email account. This phrase will alert you of any phishing attempt on your account.

If you want to enjoy the strongest email security and privacy available, sign up for a CTemplar: Armored Email account.