What is an Anti Phishing Software and How to Protect Yourself

While it’s good to be informed of the most customary signs of a spoofed email, it makes better sense to prepare yourself even further against phishing. Phishing is an unlawful approach that employs both social engineering and technical deception to steal personal, identity and financial data. Some schemes use hoax e-mails alleging to be from genuine businesses and guide recipients to bogus websites. These sites are intended to con individuals into divulging sensitive data that can include usernames as well as passwords.

What is an Anti-phishing Software

Anti-phishing software consists of computer programs that attempt to identify phishing content contained in websites, e-mail, or other forms used to accessing data (usually from the internet) and block the content, usually with a warning to the user (and often an option to view the content regardless). It is often integrated with web browsers and email clients as a toolbar that displays the real domain name for the website the viewer is visiting, in an attempt to prevent fraudulent websites from masquerading as other legitimate websites.

Most popular web browsers comes with built-in anti-phishing and anti-malware protection services, but almost none of the alternate web browsers have such protections.[1]

Password managers can also be used to help defend against phishing, as can some mutual authentication techniques…find out more at – Wikipedia.org.

Importance of Anti-Phishing Programs

With the increase in phishing scams reported every year, it’s high time business owners reconsider implementing the latest security features and tools in their database. Below are some important facts about phishing according to the AntiPhishing.org and NGS Software:

• August, 2005 recorded 13,776 phishing scams connected to 5,259 sites.
• Phishing attacks have targeted 84 companies, three of them suffered 80% of the fraud.
• 85% of phishing attacks were targeted to financial entities, like banks.
• Unfortunately, the phishers succeeded in illegally obtaining personal and sensitive details from almost 5% of the victims.
• A staggering 57 million of internet users in the US have experienced phishing emails, while 1.7 million of them fell victim to the phishing attacks.

Now you know how crucial it is for businesses and credit card users to protect their data at all times. The more you secure your data, the lower your risk of falling victim to fraudsters…more at – Petenetlive.com.

Protect Yourself from Phishing Scams

Phishing scams continue to proliferate at alarming rates and are becoming more and more difficult to detect. It’s important for you to understand how to recognize a phishing attempt and what you can do to protect yourself.

What Can I Do?

• Be cautious about all communications you receive. If it appears to be a phishing communication, do not respond. Delete it. You can also forward it to the Federal Trade Commission at spam@uce.gov.
• Do not click on any links listed in the email message, and do not open any attachments contained in a suspicious email.
• Do not enter personal information in a pop-up screen. Legitimate companies, agencies, and organizations don’t ask for personal information via pop-up screens.
• Install a phishing filter on your email application and also on your web browser. These filters will not keep out all phishing messages, but they will reduce the number of phishing attempts.

To read more, visit – Cisecurity.org

Here are a few steps a company can take to protect itself against phishing:

• Educate your employees and conduct training sessions with mock phishing scenarios.
• Deploy a SPAM filter that detects viruses, blank senders, etc.
• Keep all systems current with the latest security patches and updates.
• Install an antivirus solution, schedule signature updates, and monitor the antivirus status on all equipment.
• Develop a security policy that includes but isn’t limited to password expiration and complexity.
• Deploy a web filter to block malicious websites.
• Encrypt all sensitive company information.
• Convert HTML email into text only email messages or disable HTML email messages.
• Require encryption for employees that are telecommuting.

There are multiple steps a company can take to protect against phishing. They must keep a pulse on the current phishing strategies and confirm their security policies and solutions can eliminate threats as they evolve. It is equally as important to make sure that their employees understand the types of attacks they may face, the risks, and how to address them. Informed employees and properly secured systems are key when protecting your company from phishing attacks…more at – Digitalguardian.com.

By becoming informed and educated about the threat, your business and its employees also become more aware when using their email, regardless if they are at home or at work. Get good anti phishing solutions at Phishprotection and mitigate against the risks of phishing attacks.