Phishing and malware attacks have been disrupting the workflow of businesses for a very long time, only that the extent and intensity have increased in the past few years. Unethical hackers keep coming up with more precise techniques to dupe users and rip off the assets of a company. If statistics by the cybersecurity team at Cloudmark are to be trusted, then a medium-sized company can end up losing about 1.6 million US dollars to malware and phishing scams. This amount mounts up to billions of dollars when talking about bigger firms. These figures are disturbingly high. Thus, you must adopt as many techniques as suggested by cybersecurity experts to reduce the risk of hacking vulnerability. It includes pre-damage techniques as well as techniques to reduce the extent of losses if the company suffers a security breach.
Tips And Tricks To Reduce Malware And Phishing Threats
Phishing and malware threats have become more potent because attackers keep developing harmful variants of the existing versions. The best possible methods to prevent and limit the damage caused by such threats are listed below.
- Educate Your Employees
If even 1 system in a network is exposed to malware, it can easily spread to all the systems in that network. Thus, you should aim at hosting cybersecurity seminars to educate employees about the tips to dodge malware.
- Employees should not respond to or open any unsolicited email that enters the work email ID
- Employees should report every suspicious email to the cybersecurity team immediately
- Employees should not visit websites or open attachments that are flagged by the firewall and antivirus no matter how genuine they look
- Employees should disengage from their systems as soon as the security team conveys a potential malware attack
- Use The MFA Technique
Using the multi-factor authentication feature for as many apps as possible is a healthy and safe practice. Users have to clear multiple stages of identification. The system grants access only when all the stages are cleared. Also, enable the lockout notification feature wherever possible. It reduces the threat of forced entry attempts by attackers.
- Use The Network Segmentation Technique
This is more of a damage reducing technique if a malware is able to make a way in a network. When you divide information between different networks and every network is independent, the malware cannot spread from one network to the other, unless unaware employees click on the phishing link that the attackers send to all employees in the company from different departments. A few factors of importance are:
- Fast mode of communication that can inform employees about a cyber attack quickly. It reduces the risk of malware spread
- An alert security team that is able to identify the source of malware and backup and encrypt the data before hackers can lock the access to the network
