How to Protect Your Small Business from Phishing

One of the most frequent and the most threatening cyber threats to a small business at this point is phishing assault. In contrast to big businesses with a whole infrastructure for fighting cybersecurity attacks, small businesses can barely afford to incorporate phishing protection. However, they equally become a target.

As a matter of fact, small businesses are usually considered by cybercriminals as only soft targets because of low-security provisions. This is why they are becoming victims of data breaches, financial fraud, and identity theft.

In order to preserve your business, customer, and data safety, you need smart, strong, and scalable safeguards. The following paper describes the ways that you, as a small business owner, can secure your business against phishing, paying particular attention to protecting your business communications for instance with a secure business email solution like Tuta Mail. Here are the 5 Smart Steps to Stay Safe from Cyber Threats.

Understand What Phishing Really Looks Like

Phishing involves the impersonation of trusted organizations or even individuals used by the attackers to deceive the recipient into disclosing confidential information.

These can be in the form of email scams that are presented to be very legitimate trying to imitate banks, suppliers, or even your colleagues.

Different varieties of phishing exist:

Spear phishing: Up to particular people or positions in your business.
Clone phishing: A fake email is duplicated and altered a bit to have malicious links.
Business Email Compromise (BEC): Poses in the role of a high-level executive requesting an immediate transfer of funds or the password to his account.

The first step in protecting your small business is comprehending various strategies employed by the attackers.

Train Your Team on Phishing Awareness

The front line of defense is your employees and a poor line of defense in case they are not trained. Security systems, even the best ones, cannot protect you against a breach, if one of your team members click on a malicious link without even suspecting that it’s malicious.

Invest in the continuous training that will assist personnel:

Recognize phishing emails
Find dodgy links and attachments
Know what information must never be sent through email
Report malicious emails to your IT department or assigned security leader

Consider phishing awareness an in-house practice. Make your employees not afraid of speaking out in case they believe they have clicked on something malicious.

Use a Secure Business Email Platform

Phishing attempts must be fended off by your email system. The majority of phishing attacks start off with a normal message that seems to be innocent on the surface. This is, therefore, the reason why it is important to adopt a secure business email service, particularly as a small business.

Tuta is the most reliable service on the market. Tuta is an end-to-end encrypted email service developed with the sole intention of keeping privacy and security in mind. It is suitable for small businesses that need a safe communication system that is not as complex or as expensive as enterprise-level systems.

Key features of Tuta include:

End-to-end encryption of emails, including subject line, body, and attachments
Two-factor authentication (2FA)
Transparency in the form of open-source codebase
No third-party tracking or advertisement
Encrypted address book and calendar
Business email packages for small teams

Another reason is that by using a secure email provider like Tuta, most of the phishing attacks can be blocked before reaching your mailbox, and this is because of the good spam filter and threat protections in place, as well as, undisclosed control over the domain and user accounts.

Implement Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)

In case even a phishing attack manages to get either of your team members to divulge their password, you will still be able to put the threat one step behind with two-factor Authentication (2FA).

2FA involves both processes: it will not allow anyone who stole your password access to your email or system until a second form of identification (which, in most cases, is a code being sent to your phone or having been produced through an application) is entered. This straightforward move makes it exponentially difficult for attackers to gain control over your email accounts.

Keep Systems and Software Updated

Outdated systems and software are open invitations for hackers. Many phishing emails include malicious links that exploit known vulnerabilities in your software.

Make it a routine part of your business operations to:

Regularly update your operating systems
Keep browsers, antivirus software, and email clients up to date
Patch third-party applications and plugins timely

Conduct automatic updates where applicable, so you can comfortably be secured with the most up-to-date security patches.

Bonus Tip: Use Custom Email Domains with Secure Configuration

Using free email domains such as Gmail, Yahoo, or Outlook when conducting business correspondence is not only a matter of understating the credibility of your brand, but it also poses a potential risk of phishing impersonation.

Tuta is a service that allows you to create a bespoke business domain and manage DNS records (SPF, DKIM, DMARC, etc.). These assist in confirming that the emails that are delivered via your domain are not spoofed, and they safeguard your customers and business affiliates against spoofing.

Conclusion

The size of the business does not matter to cybercriminals. Small businesses are always desirable to them since they have fewer funds to spend on security systems and their oversight is not quite technical. After phishing attacks, a company can suffer revenue losses, reputational damage, and even legal problems due to revealed information about clients.

Your small company can defend itself successfully against phishing and other cyber-attacks.

Act now, make data protection the main ingredient of company success.