Phishing is the leading way to compromise your business. Period.

Phishing remains the leading avenue for infiltrating your business, with social engineering tactics being the primary means to deliver ransomware.

Despite rigorous phishing simulations and security awareness training, the ability of users to discern phishing emails is increasingly challenging. Attackers now utilize generative AI to craft sophisticated and convincing emails. This advancement enables highly personalized attacks, leveraging details like recent job changes and mimicking executive communication styles. Moreover, the emergence of deep-fake technology adds another layer of complexity, exemplified by incidents where AI-generated personas successfully execute fraudulent transactions.

An additional tactic employed by threat actors is the inclusion of QR codes in phishing emails. Traditional security tools often overlook these codes, perceiving them as harmless embedded images.

While it typically takes around 16 hours to craft a human-generated phishing email, AI can generate deceptive phishes in a mere five minutes. The evolution of AI-powered phishing emails transcends grammatical accuracy, with attackers leveraging AI to scrape LinkedIn for timely information, such as job changes, to personalize their attacks convincingly. This enables them to send meticulously crafted emails, purportedly from high-ranking executives, requesting actions like re-authentication of multi-factor authentication or signing fake documents, with unprecedented realism.

To combat these threats, businesses must deploy email security tools capable of analyzing messages to identify potential malicious content. Several reputable email security solutions are available, including those offered by Microsoft, Google, Ironscales, Mimecast, and Tessian. While these products effectively filter out many malicious emails, Mimecast is renowned as a gold standard in email security.

However, it's crucial to acknowledge that email security measures are not infallible and some phishing attempts will inevitably bypass these defences. Therefore, businesses must have robust incident response programs in place to swiftly address and mitigate the impact of successful phishing attacks.

While training programs remain vital, skepticism persists regarding their efficacy in detecting phishing attempts. Hence, it's imperative to prioritize implementing preventive controls to minimize the likelihood of phishing emails reaching employees and mitigate their consequences. This includes measures such as restricting administrative privileges, limiting downloads and segmenting the environment.

Addressing phishing threats demands a multifaceted approach, emphasizing the importance of comprehensive business risk mitigation processes alongside fundamental cybersecurity measures like patching and vulnerability management.

Companies must continually reassess and adapt their security strategies to stay ahead of evolving threats like phishing.