When it comes to best defense against phishing emails, the key is educating employees on the tactics of criminals. It’s also important for companies to implement spam filters and two factor authentication, which prevent hackers who have compromised an employee’s credentials from accessing sensitive information. Additionally, the use of email add-ons and extensions can prevent employees from clicking on suspicious links.

While best defense against phishing emails attacks have become more sophisticated, they are still less about technology than about social engineering. Modern phishing emails often play on people’s emotions by using themes such as empathy, fear, or hostile accusations. They are designed to disrupt productivity and provoke an angry reaction, which can ultimately lead to the compromise of financial accounts or enterprise systems.

Phishing 101: A Comprehensive Guide to Recognizing and Defending Against Suspicious Emails

It’s a good idea to include security awareness training as part of the onboarding process for new hires. This will educate employees to be wary of email attachments from people they don’t know and to always read URLs from right to left so they can validate the true destination of a link before clicking. It’s also a good idea for employees to use long passwords and change them regularly, as this will limit the potential damage from a successful attack.

Keeping up to date with the latest operating system and security patches is another crucial component of effective phishing protection. In addition, implementing email authentication standards such as Sender Policy Framework (SPF), DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM), and Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC) will help to fight the proliferation of SPAM by enabling receiving servers to confirm that an incoming mail server is authorized to send on behalf of a particular domain.