What is a Phishing attack?

The spread of Phishing attacks highlights the importance of Cybersecurity in the network society. Phishing is a term that indicates a strategy put in place by cyber criminals to obtain personal or professional data of the victim. Users are tricked into providing confidential information such as passwords and login credentials through of email, social media conversations or banner ads. These messages seem to come from legitimate companies, but they are actually elaborate scams that require you to update, validate or confirm the information contained in your account, often suggesting the presence of a problem and then appropriate sensitive data.
A particular category of phishing attack is spear phishing, which targets and attacks a specific individual or organization. This is why companies must plan, implement, improve and continuously measure their security controls. Often, in fact, despite the application of traditional encryption techniques, you are not always able to counter cyber-attacks. The need for more advanced security tools finds an answer in recent cybersecurity techniques based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) mechanisms, to counter increasingly complex and sophisticated attacks.
Phishing attacks sometimes anticipate malware attacks, these are any type of malicious software developed with the aim of infecting computers or mobile devices. Hackers use emails created with social engineering techniques that encourage the victim to open the attachment that automatically installs the malware code on the device, allowing the theft of personal information, passwords or money.
Through malicious software it is possible to steal, encrypt or delete data, alter or compromise the fundamental functions of a computer and spy on the activities of users without them noticing or providing any authorization.

How do this cyber-attacks manifest?

Today, cheating techniques are becoming increasingly sophisticated and difficult to combat, so much that they can more frequently cause damage to institutions, companies and private citizens. From fake bank calls to deceptive apps, from sms or whatsapp to calls that cause sensitive data to leak. This shows the importance of equipping yourself with cybersecurity solutions to defend yourself against Phishing attacks.
Mainly attacks are aimed at ICT companies, Digital Services, E-commerce platforms, devices and operating systems, for data theft. Secondly the Finance industry, then banking institutions, insurance,  cryptocurrency platforms, are equally affected by obtaining credit card data or cash ransom requests for getting their data back.
The attack can be carried out either by email or social networks (for example with a fake Facebook page) or through the faithful reproduction of pages of known websites, forcing victims to share their personal data during the process.
Web criminals, through Phishing attacks, exploit the weaknesses of people with little knowledge of the importance of cybersecurity, the signals they need to warn are the following:

• alarming messages from trusted institutions asking to verify their credentials;
• generic emails that never contain the recipient’s name;
• the web address does not look at all like the original one usually used;
• new icons on the computer screen or pc slower than normal in performing the simplest actions.

How to limit computer intrusions in the company?

Cybersecurity is a set of technologies, processes, and practices designed to protect networks, computers, programs, and data from attack, damage, or unauthorized access. Awareness is the best defense against this type of threat, especially in business environments where many accounts are active every day using sensitive customer and business information. Equip yourself with a robust Security Awareness program to teach employees to identify and recognize phishing attacks and simulated campaigns and measure results to assess the effectiveness of training programs can be a solution against attacks computer and malware.
The threat landscape is constantly evolving, so it’s important to leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) to analyze user behavior and quickly detect threats. Artificial intelligence and machine learning enable the detection of problematic patterns in unstructured data and provide security teams with the data they need to respond quickly to the threat. In particular Machine learning is suitable for detecting vulnerabilities that could fool the security team.
Limited access to high-value data could help protect against criminal attacks to reduce the chances of sensitive data being compromised. It is also important that the accounts of these users are monitored by a service that can identify:

• Misuse of credentials for fraudulent purposes;
• Databreach;
• Leakage of files eventually compromised and exported to the dark/deep web.

IT security assessment and risk management

The arimas professional team offers SaaS-based solutions to evaluate, certify and manage enterprise network security effortlessly. arimas aims to provide detailed instructions to implement actions that reduce the attack surface and remain safe against aggression. Our approach is to help customers measure how well prepared (or not) their security systems are, by providing certainty that they are functioning properly and highlighting weaknesses in the infrastructure.
Risk management is a set of algorithms and processes that use a stable scientific approach to identify, analyze, evaluate, control and avoid and/or eliminate digital risks across the entire organization. The Chief Risk Manager (CRM) can constantly have its network under control, using aggregated data of security risk indicators. Some risk management platforms can provide advice on specific defensive actions that can determine which resources should be allocated to combine risk tolerance and business strategy.
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