Anti-Phishing Tools

The concept of phishing has been part of human life since the internet began to take off. In the mid-1990s, fraudsters pretending to be AOL employees used instant messaging and email to target users and steal passwords. Since then, phishing has become an ever-present threat. IBM research shows that in 2023, phishing will be the topmost attack vector and behind 41% of all security incidents.

Why is Phishing So Dangerous?

Cybercriminals increasingly turn to tactics that allow them to enter a corporate-sensitive area, such as a database or web server, more efficiently. While hackers could and do identify vulnerabilities in these network components, it is much easier and more difficult to detect if entry is gained legitimately. This means that if a cybercriminal can get hold of legitimate login credentials, they can open the digital door and walk right in.

Phishing has become the topmost attack vector because it tricks employees into unwittingly providing their login credentials to a cybercriminal.

Phishing is behind some of the biggest and smallest cyber-attacks, and some of the highest-profile cyber-attacks in recent years began with phishing emails. Attacks such as the massive U.S. Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack and the more minor but still highly damaging attack on St. Helens Council in the U.K. are two such examples. Phishing knows no boundaries, and attackers use this device to target small and large organizations across every industry, sector, and geography.

Phishing is successful because the cybercriminals behind a phishing campaign meticulously understand human behavior and how to manipulate it. Phishing tactics take advantage of how human beings react to specific prompts, such as a sense of urgency or the fear of missing out (FOMO). Cybercriminals concoct phishing campaigns based on behavioral drivers, often targeting certain employees, such as administrators. Targeted phishing attacks focusing on specific organizational roles use spear phishing emails and variants like Clone phishing.

Phishing is often the starting point for a much more significant cyber-attack. Attacks, such as ransomware and data theft, are often associated with the theft of login credentials; cybercriminals use legitimate access to install ransomware and other malware or steal data.

"Phishing attacks have soared by 65%, from $2.79 million in 2020 to $4.6 million in 2022."

Ponemon Institute

The Impact of Phishing

Business Email Compromise (BEC)

According to the FBI, BEC scams cost businesses over $50 billion. BEC scams often use phishing emails to help carry out the attack. A BEC scam results in the theft of money, and login credential theft via phishing is often a starting point. 

Ransomware

Phishing was the topmost method used by cybercriminals to deliver ransomware in 2022. 

Data Theft

Stolen credentials are the most common method used to facilitate data theft. Phishing is a highly successful way for cybercriminals to steal login credentials; phishing emails often contain malicious URLs that take victims to spoof web pages to harvest their credentials. 

Supply Chain Compromise 

Compromised supply chains have become a successful part of the cyber-attack chain, with phishing emails targeting vital suppliers, including SalesForce and Microsoft. Research has shown that 92% of organizations have succumbed to a phishing attack via a Microsoft 365 environment.

For details on the different types of phishing, read TitanHQ's blog post on "Phishing Attack Examples and How to Prevent Them."

"Phishing will be the topmost attack vector and behind 41% of all security incidents"

IBM research

How Can an Organization Stop Phishing Attacks?

Because cybercriminals are experts at evasion tactics, organizations must use layers of protection to stop phishing. Layers of protection act as a catch-all defense mechanism to stop even increasingly sophisticated generative-AI-enabled phishing. The anti-phishing layers enforced using anti-phishing tools build a robust defense against cyber attacks that use phishing. The following measures and anti-phishing tools are part of a comprehensive approach to preventing phishing attacks:

Security Awareness Training

Phishing protection begins by training employees about how phishing attacks work. Security awareness training involves working on the specific behaviors cybercriminals exploit during a phishing attack. 

Phishing Simulation Software

Security awareness training should be backed up by using a phishing simulation platform. These platforms create spoof phishing emails sent out to users and roles in an organization as part of a training campaign. The spoof phishing emails are configured to reflect some of the most prevalent threats. Employees receive a spoof phishing email, and the platform will use interventional training to teach employees what happens if they interact with the phishing email.

AI-Driven Email Filters

Email filtering is used to prevent email-borne attacks. The email filter is configured to look for signs of a phishing attempt. However, unless the email filter uses machine learning and other AI algorithms, it may miss more subtle and sophisticated phishing threats. Heuristic filters should be used to score incoming and outgoing emails, the score reflecting the risk profile of the email. Heuristic filters can quickly adapt to changes in the phishing and spam landscape. As well as intelligent engines helping to predict the next zero-minute attack, email filters must be able to apply multiple levels of protection to catch the various phishing tactics used to evade detection. Other techniques used by email filters include URL rewriting at the time of a click; email links are replaced and sent to an inspection site to check if the website associated with the link is legitimate.

DNS Filtering

AI-driven DNS filters use intelligence gathered from hundreds of millions of end-users to train human-supervised Machine Learning algorithms. An AI-powered DNS Filter builds up active lists of dangerous URLs; an intelligent DNS filter will identify emerging URLs not on known phishing blocklists. 

MFA/2FA

Additional authentication layered on top of username and password helps reduce the phishing threat. However, phishers are now circumventing MFA and 2FA using Phishing-as-a-Service platforms. While it is essential to use multiple authentication factors, these should always be backed up by anti-phishing tools such as email filtering solutions and security awareness training.

What is PhishTitan?

Using AI-enabled anti-phishing tools to protect email from phishing threats is essential as the security threat landscape is constantly changing. TitanHQ's PhishTitan is an AI-enabled anti-phishing tool that uses multiple layers of protection to stop phishing attacks. PhishTitan delivers comprehensive, AI-enabled protection and is powered by LLM intelligence from 2 billion mailboxes and trillions of native signals.

PhishTitan Anti-Phishing Tool Features 

PhishTitan uses a layered approach to the prevention of phishing email attacks as well as powerful AI-enabled algorithms. Features of PhishTitan include the following:

• AI-Driven Threat Intelligence: Anti-phishing analysis based on AI and LLM data.
• Time of Click Protection: PhishTitan replaces email links and sends the link to an inspection site to check the website's validity associated with the URL.
• Link Lock Service: Your company remains protected even if a recipient clicks a malicious URL.
• Post-Delivery Remediation: Even if an email slips through the layers of defense, administrators can still remove it from employees' inboxes. 
• Native Integration with Office 365 Email: This makes business email security simple and removes human error.
• Data loss prevention (DLP): Prevents sensitive data from leaving the corporate network. DLP protects intellectual property, customer data, and other sensitive information.