Build security resilience against phishing attacks
Phishing is the attempt to deliver malware to or obtain sensitive information from a victim, including usernames, passwords and banking and credit card details. Phishers pose as a trustworthy entity (an internet provider, credit card company, social media platform, cloud application companies and plenty others) in an electronic communication. This could mean email, social media posts and direct messages, or even messages on collaboration tools like Slack.
One in every 99 emails is a phishing attack. Of those, 30% are opened, and this doesn’t even include non-email phishing like LinkedIn messages.
Clicking on malicious links is a fast track to a data breach, ransomware attack, credential theft and more. While financial services and retail organizations might be the among the most targeted, any organization is one click away from a catastrophic cybersecurity attack. So how can you keep your data and your users protected?
Cisco Umbrella DNS-layer security protects users from accessing malicious domains by blocking unsafe destinations — before a connection is ever made. Umbrella Secure Internet Gateway (SIG) goes further, protecting users from phishing via unsafe URLs, encrypted traffic, non-standard ports and protocols, and more.
Phishing, fraud and other threats
90%
of all attacks begin with a phishing email
47%
of social media phishing attempts are made via LinkedIn messages
50M
phishing attempts tracked and blocked daily by Cisco Umbrella
Cisco Umbrella has had a significant impact in preventing breaches and allowing my team to proactively block domains to active phishing campaigns. We have prevented employees from getting compromised.
Todd Beebe, Chief Security Officer, Freeport LNG Development LP
TechValidate![]()
Phishing is on the rise
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, bad actors used the confusion and chaos of shifting workforce logistics – transitioning workers into safely working at home – to launch thousands of phishing scams, meant to trick people into clicking on content that would give an attacker access to their data or network.
In the beginning of 2020, very few domains even mentioned “COVID” or “Corona”, but by the beginning of April, 117,000 domains included these keywords. Of those, more than 75,000 domains were phishing or otherwise malicious in nature.
Years later, and the surge of phishing attempts hasn’t slowed. Since March 2020, 81% of organizations around the world have seen an increase in email phishing attacks. Additionally, data from Google Safe Browsing shows that there are now nearly 75 times as many phishing sites as there are malware sites on the internet.
How are people still getting hooked?
An increase in cloud application usage plays a part. Cloud adoption was key in helping transition workers to home offices and keeping communication and productivity intact, and it remains critical in hybrid work models. With an increase in organizations relying on Microsoft’s cloud applications, it makes sense that Microsoft would be the most impersonated brand globally when it comes to phishing attempts. They make up over 40% of brand impersonation attempts.
Cisco Umbrella protects against phishing,
on and off the network
Deploy in minutes
Umbrella is a cloud-based security solution that you can deploy and use within minutes. There are no bulky, on-premises appliances to install or manage, and no complex patching or updates.