{"id":206328,"date":"2017-10-19T14:19:22","date_gmt":"2017-10-19T12:19:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=206328"},"modified":"2017-10-23T09:10:02","modified_gmt":"2017-10-23T07:10:02","slug":"why-phishing-attacks-are-so-effective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/industry-news\/206328\/why-phishing-attacks-are-so-effective\/","title":{"rendered":"Why phishing attacks are so effective"},"content":{"rendered":"

An alarming 91% of hacking attempts today begin with some kind of phishing attack, which uses email and social-engineering to gain access to confidential data.<\/p>\n

Hackers attempt to dupe recipients into opening an attachment, clicking on a link, divulging confidential information or even wiring money to a fraudulent account.<\/p>\n

“What makes these attacks so effective is that social engineering, effectively hacking the human brain, is actually quite easy to do,” Dr Bright Gameli Mawudor, Head of Cyber Security Solutions\u00a0\u2013 Internet Solutions, Kenya.<\/p>\n

Mawudor was speaking about\u00a0Social Engineering – how it works and how it gets used<\/em> at the Mimecast: Anatomy of an Email-Bourne Attack<\/em> presentation at the 2nd Annual AfriSecure Cyber Security Summit in Johannesburg.<\/p>\n

“As human beings, we are very open especially on social media, and all this information is incredibly valuable to hackers,”\u00a0Mawudor said. “We are the problem. People are the problem.”<\/p>\n

Essentially, it is human nature that makes us so vulnerable – we desire to be helpful, have a tendency to trust people we don’t know, and have a fear of getting into trouble, which are all traits that social engineers are able to capitalise on.<\/p>\n

Social engineers are able to create confidence that they are who they say they are and that they are legitimately seeking information.<\/p>\n

Even people who don’t consider themselves to be trusting by nature are vulnerable when presented with\u00a0the right story, the right voice, the right speech pattern, the right body language, and so forth.<\/p>\n

The reason phishing attacks are often successful is because it usually appears to come from a known or trusted source, often impersonating a C-level executive.<\/p>\n

As such, phishing email attacks can be remarkably difficult to identify, and even when employees are trained how to spot a possible phishing attack or CEO Fraud, 23% of phishing emails are still open.<\/p>\n

With the potential for phishing scams to cause disruption to business operations, damage to reputation and loss of business costing millions of dollars, organizations urgently need a sophisticated solution for preventing a phishing attack.<\/p>\n

“It’s not just about potential monetary loss, as this can often be recovered – it is reputational damage that is very difficult to recover from,” warned\u00a0Brandon Bekker, Mimecast South Africa MD.<\/p>\n

“The world is changing and email has become a successful place for cybercriminals to operate as it is far easier to hack a person than a system.”<\/p>\n

Mimecast Targeted Threat Protection provides a highly effective solution for preventing a phishing attack.<\/p>\n

It defends against malicious links in email, weaponised attachments and social-engineering attacks to protect users and organizations from the dangers of advanced threats.<\/p>\n

Mimecast improves phishing email and spear security by scanning all inbound emails in real-time, providing three levels of protection:<\/p>\n