Phishing Attacks: A Hurdle For Middle East's Organizations

Email is not as glamorous as some of the other communication channels, such as social media and mobile applications. However, it has long since been adopted by enterprises as an effective communication channel used to stay in touch with customers, business partners, and colleagues. In a world where most technological innovations are constantly being replaced by more efficient and swifter solutions, email has managed to stay as relevant and popular as ever.

For many years, every organization has been harnessing the power of email to increase its productivity and reach. An article from Marking Blog reported over 175.5 million internet users in the Middle East as of June 2019. This is about 3.9% of the total internet users and these numbers keep increasing every year.

Almost every internet user creates at least one email account to create social media accounts or access various applications. The ever-increasing number of email users has offered organizations an opportunity to expand their reach and increase their customer base. However, there is a major issue that has been constantly interrupting the organizations from doing so.

Hampering the Growth of an Organization

One of the major problems organizations in the Middle East are facing today is the steep rise in cybercrimes. Email remains one of the favorite and most frequently used means for cybercriminals to attack businesses. According to FAU researchers, 78% of people are aware of malicious links in emails yet they clicked anyway. And more than 2.57 million phishing attacks were detected across the Middle East in a year as per the report from Middle East Business.

It has become quite common for cybercriminals in the Middle East to impersonate C-level executives. They rely on impersonating a company executive, especially on social media platforms and emails, to entice lower-level employees. This helps the criminals obtain funds as well as sensitive information from the organizations.

In our previous blog ‘Middle East hit by a wave of phishing attacks in Q2 of 2020’, we discussed how the region is witnessing a rapid rise in email-based attacks.  Moreover, we also discussed how the region is likely to face more email attacks in the future in our other blog ‘email-borne attacks expected to hit 60% of the organizations in the UAE’.

It is loud and clear that phishing attacks have become a popular tactic among attackers because of their simplicity and relatively low economic cost. So, the same email channel that has been helping organizations in building relationships and increasing productivity has also become a vulnerability. However, organizations can implement some of the best cyber security practices in order to enjoy the benefits offered by email safely.

How to Identify Phishing Emails

Despite being one of the oldest kinds of scams, tackling phishing attacks remains one of the most challenging tasks for organizations around the world. However, given the proliferation of phishing attacks, it is important to be aware of what phishing emails look like. So, in order to educate your employees to identify phishing emails, organizations will need to provide effective cyber security awareness training. 

Threatcop Security Awareness Training does exactly that. The tool helps in simulating cyber attacks including some common attack vectors such as phishing, vishing, smishing, ransomware, etc. It also helps in identifying the vulnerable employees within an organization and trains them according to their weaknesses.

Additionally, here are some of the most effective measures employees should take in order to identify and mitigate phishing attacks:

• Always look out for the sender’s email address in every mail
• Make sure you don’t click on suspicious links before hovering over them to find their destination
• Never download an attachment  from an unknown source before scanning it
• Beware of unsolicited emails that ask you for credentials or sensitive information
• Stay up-to-date with evolving phishing attacks following the latest cyber security news
• Implement email authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to secure your email domain and stop threat actors from sending malicious emails from your email domain.

TDMARC: An Effectual Solution

One of the main reasons for the popularity of phishing attacks is that spoofing a legitimate email domain has become very easy for cybercriminals. They can just go over a few tutorials and start spoofing legit email domains to dupe targeted employees. However, organizations can prevent it with the help of effective tools and practices. When it comes to protecting the email domain, TDMARC is considered one of the most effective tools worldwide.

TDMARC is a CGA-certified email authentication tool that monitors DMARC, SPF, and DKIM to secure your email domain. The tool comes with the unique Smart DMARC feature that lets you set DMARC policies easily through the TDMARC dashboard. In addition, the tool also gives you the ability to control the outbound emails flowing through your domain. Moreover, it lets you determine whether the outbound emails that fail DMARC authentication should end up in the recipient’s inbox, be redirected to the spam folder, or bounce back. 

Here are some of the major benefits of implementing TDMARC:

• Detects and prevents email domain forgery
• Boosts the email engagement rate
• Increases email deliverability rates
• Lets you set up DMARC policies with ease
• Allows you to modify or update your domain’s SPF record effortlessly
• Monitors your domain’s outbound email flow

Implement TDMARC today to ensure the absolute security of your email domain while increasing its reputation, deliverability, and engagement.