How To Prevent Phishing In Business: A Guide

Phishing is a form of cyber crime where cyber criminals send spam messages to individuals and organisations. These messages contain malicious links encouraging targets to click links to spam websites or download malicious software.

The UK government’s Cyber Security Breaches 2024 survey found that phishing attacks are the most common type of cyber breach, affecting 84% of businesses and 83% of charities.

Forbes also states that phishing is one of the most effective types of cybercrime, as over three-quarters of account takeover attacks begin with phishing. With this in mind, businesses should take steps to identify and prevent phishing scams from occurring, to avoid costly stages later on.

If you’re wondering how to prevent phishing in business, you’ll need to understand what phishing attacks look like, then take on key strategies to safeguard your company against these breaches.

Let’s explore this below in our guide.

How Does Phishing Affect A Business?

Phishing attacks can affect anyone, but how does phishing affect a business?

Phishing has serious consequences for businesses, including financial losses, data breaches, and reputational damage.

In fact, over 25% of UK companies that have fallen victim to a phishing attack have reported suffering direct financial losses, highlighting the real impact of these scams.

If an employee falls victim to a phishing scam, hackers can gain access to sensitive company information, like customer data, login credentials, or financial records. This can result in identity theft, fraudulent transactions, or regulatory penalties if compliance laws are violated.

Phishing emails often contain ransomware or malware, which can disrupt operations by compromising entire networks or locking critical files. This can lead to costly downtime, expensive recovery efforts, and lost productivity.

Beyond financial and operational damage, phishing attacks erode customer trust. If client’s personal information is exposed, they may lose confidence in the company’s ability to protect their data, leading to loss of business and long-term reputational harm.

Just a single successful phishing attempt can have widespread consequences, making cyber security awareness essential for safeguarding a business.

Anyone can be a phishing target, as hackers target multiple email addresses to increase their chances of successful attacks.

How to Identify a Phishing Attack

How can you protect yourself from phishing attacks?

If you’re wondering how to prevent phishing scams, you’ll need know the signs of these attacks before they occur. Stay vigilant, keeping an eye out for suspicious signs in emails, messages, or websites.

Hackers use texts or email messages to attempt to steal account information, passwords, or employee data. If they access this information, they could gain access to your company’s email or bank accounts, or sell your data to other scammers.

Hackers keep updating their strategies in response to modern trends, but you might see some common methods used with phishing messages.

Phishing messages regularly tell stories to trick targets into clicking links or opening files. An employee might receive an unexpected text or email that looks like it’s from a legitimate company, like a bank or online payment application.

Examples of Phishing Attacks

Here are some signs of phishing attacks to help you identify these cyber threats:

Claiming suspicious log-in attempts or suspicious activity.
Links to make unexpected payments – which contain malware
Claiming you are eligible to register for government tax refunds
Issues with payment or account information.
Urgent need to confirm financial or personal details
Coupons for free products
Emails containing fake invoices

Real businesses may communicate via email, but they won’t send texts or emails which contain links to update payment details.

Biggest Phishing Attacks On Businesses

Here are some of the biggest phishing attacks on businesses of all sizes.

1. Business Impersonation

A common phishing attack affecting enterprise security that involves hackers impersonating your company.

Egress’ 2024 Phishing Threat Trends report found that 89% of phishing emails use impersonation. Adobe was the most impersonated brand, with Microsoft coming second.

This type of phishing attack is usually done with an email linked to a domain similar to the target business, like john.smith@microsoft-support.com.

Using a domain that resembles a legitimate one deceives recipients into believing the email is authentic. These emails often request sensitive information, like login credentials or payment details.

2. Spear/Targeted Phishing

Spear phishing is a cyber threat tactic which uses a false business name, as well as important details about the victim. Research from Norton found that 88% of organisations encounter spear phishing attacks each year, highlighting how frequently businesses are targeted.

The scammer finds employee names, their job position, and other personal details, then includes them in an email. These details make the email seem more legitimate, which can lure targets into a malicious trap.

3. CEO Fraud/Whaling

Phishing scammers can obtain the email credentials of high-profile individuals, which puts management and executive teams at risk.

The hacker uses email addresses from high-profile individuals to target colleagues, other teams, and potentially customers. The emails exploit authority and urgency, tricking partners or employees into complying without question.

At Net Consulting, our VIP threat monitoring service is tailored to focus on security threats faced by high-level individuals.

Check out our VIP Threat Monitoring service to find out more.

4. Voice Phishing/Vishing

The UK currently has the highest fraud call rate within Europe, with 3 out of 4 businesses having lost money as a result of voice scams.

Scammers can call targets on the phone using tools to disguise their identity, like VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) servers.

These voice or VOIP phishing calls use pre-recorded messages to impersonate a real source, or use voice cloning to imitate the voices of people targets may recognise.

Vishing attacks are dangerous because a successful attack almost always causes great financial loss for the target.

How To Prevent Phishing In Business

Though phishing scams are common, there are steps you can take to prevent phishing from affecting your business.

1. Train Employees To Identify Phishing

Your staff are your business’s first line of defence against phishing attacks. Training employees to spot phishing attacks is a great way to prevent them from occurring.

Look for courses from professional security awareness organisations to ensure staff are up to date with the latest hacking techniques. Have your employees repeat security assessments frequently to refresh their knowledge and understanding.

2. Use Strong Email Security Strategies

Use secure email gateways or spam filters to prevent deceptive emails from reaching your employees. These scan and monitor incoming emails for fraudulent or spam content.

If these tools identify malicious content, they will prevent them from reaching an email inbox, improving enterprise security.

Spam filters, anti-virus tools, and gateway email filters can help stop malicious emails from reaching your staff members.

3. Multi-Factor Authentication

If a colleague gives a scammer important information, multi-factor authentication measures decrease a scammer’s ability to obtain access to an employee’s work email account. This gives you more chances of identifying and responding to security breaches promptly.

4. Create A Culture of Security Awareness

Fostering open communication about security issues, encouraging staff to report incidents, and implementing a zero-trust approach to cyber security can help build a security awareness culture within your business.

Increasing awareness of the significance and signs of phishing attacks means your employees can identify attacks, are less likely to fall victim to phishing, and can flag and report security issues so you can contain the event in time.

Phishing scams pose significant threats to businesses of all sizes, but fortunately, there are proactive measures, like the steps above, that can help defend your organisation.

How Can We Help

We hope this post helped you understand how to prevent phishing in business, including how to identify a phishing attack, so you can take steps to safeguard your business.

At Net Consulting, our Advanced Phishing Validation service helps businesses stay ahead of evolving threats. We provide tailored, scalable, and effective phishing detection, without the complexity of traditional solutions.

Don’t let phishing attacks compromise your operations – take action now.

Call us at +44 (0)29 20972020 to find out more.