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What is Phishing?

Phishing is a type of social engineering attack used to steal user data, including login credentials and credit card details. Scammers obtain sensitive information or data from the user, by disguising themselves as a trustworthy source. The victim is duped into opening an email, instant message, or text message. The recipient then clicks a malicious link, leading to the installation of malware, the freezing of the system if part of a ransomware attack or the revealing of sensitive information.

As an example, is the 2018 phishing attack targeting Netflix users. The phishing email purported to be from Netflix and warned recipients that the company were unable to access the customer’s billing information. The message requested customers to click on a link to update their payment method. That link, of course, directed the customers to a fake website created by the scammers.

That being said, not all phishing attacks look and operate in the same way. Phishing scams can take a variety of forms and often have different goals. Some phishing email might try to trick users into clicking a link that leads to a fake website as in the Netflix scam already mentioned. These fake websites install malware allowing hackers to steal personal or senstive information or take control of your device.

What is Spear Phishing?

Spear phishing is an email scam targeted towards a specific individual, organization or business. It is often used to steal data or install malware on a targeted user’s computer for malicious purposes. A typical spear phishing attack includes an email and attachment. The email includes information specifically related to the target, often including the target's name and position within the organization. Most huge data breaches have a social engineering component augmented by detection evasion techniques.

Office 365 Phishing Attacks

Microsoft Office 365 is one of the world’s leading software platforms, boasting over 120 million business users. Although the Office 365 spam filter offers a reasonable level of security, some businesses find it lacking against highly-sophisticated cyber threats especially phishing attacks.  Because of this many organizations are adopting a defense-in-depth strategy, using PhishTitan Office 365 phishing protection, to protect their Office 365 users from advanced and persistent phishing threats.

A recent Google Docs phishing scam that affected over 1 million Gmail users – PhishTitan had 100% success rate in defending our users against this threat.  It’s vital you do everything possible to prevent these attacks reaching your users inboxes.  It’s not a question of if there will be another damaging ransomware attack; it’s a question of when.

PhishTitan for Office 365 allows you supplement Office 365s native email security with award-winning phishing protection from a dedicated security provider. PhishTitan's sandboxing feature protects against breaches and sophisticated email attacks by providing a powerful environment to run in-depth, sophisticated analysis of unknown or suspicious programs and files. PhishTitan for Office365 adds more advanced security like protection from phishing and spear phishing, including Business Email Compromise and zero-day protection.

Did You Know?

99.99%

SpamTitan's spam catch rate

11 Seconds

a ransomware attack occurs

$285

the average cost to manage spam per person without an email filter

56.50%

of all email is spam

Rising Threat of Phishing Attacks

The global COVID-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic impacted the world in many ways. It has fundamentally changed the way many organizations and businesses operate as a large number of employees more to remote working, a shift that cybercriminals are exploiting in malicious campaigns encompassing phishing attacks, spam, malware, ransomware, and malicious domains. In this environment anti phishing protection is essential in order to protect your devices that will be now be operating outside of the secured perimeter. 

IT & Security professionals in organizations are dealing with an enormous number of coronavirus themed email phishing attacks. Our email security solution PhishTitan is blocking increasing levels of  Coronavirus-related phishing emails and malware.

The Evolution of Phishing

The evolution of phishing is, of course, in line with the evolution of technology. Until recently, a typical method used in phishing emails to install malware on a device, was to carry the malware as an infected attachment, usually an Office document or PDF. This method matched employees use of emails to share documents. This method was successful and continues to this day.

However, as the use of online collaboration portals increase, employees are less likely to share documents via email. In response to this change, cybercriminals are changing their tactics. Instead of phishing emails containing malware-infected documents, scammers are piggy-backing on the way online collaboration portals work. That is, sending emails with shared links to documents and files. These shared platforms are at risk of being misused by phishing campaigns via malicious links in fake emails branded to look like the portal. A current focus of these phishing scams is on SharePoint and OneDrive.

Phishing is as much about human behavior as it is about technology. Cybercriminals know that tricking users into performing an action can effectively get them the results they need. Getting the human user to perform this action relies on ‘trust’. It is this trust element that scammers use when they spoof well-known brands, such as SharePoint and OneDrive.

Keeping Remote Workers Safe from Phishing Emails

TitanHQ are helping organizations and MSPs protect their transitions to remote work environments. The source of traffic has changed from “in office” origination to “at home” usage, but anti- phishing protection is still required and becomes essential for the shifting remote workforce.

We have seen massive demand this year for two products in particular that can be rolled out seamlessly to remote devices and work from home environments. These are PhishTitan cloud-based email security, which protects remote workers from the newest iterations of phishing attacks, and our AI-driven DNS security product, WebTitan. Combined, these create an umbrella layer protecting users data and devices from phishing attempts.

Advanced email security with powerful, real time updating AI driven threat intelligence. COVID-19 phishing scams are the most sophisticated versions of phishing emails the industry has seen. PhishTitan anti phishing filter provides powerful protection blocking inbound threats and securing outbound data. It blocks spam, phishing, malware infected links and other email threats.

Why not sign up for a no obligation free demo today.

A recent Google Docs phishing scam that affected over 1 million Gmail users – PhishTitan had 100% success rate in defending our users against this threat.

Protecting against Phishing Attacks with an Anti Phishing Filter

The first line of defense against phishing scams is email protection. Email messages created by attackers sometimes have a recognizable spoofed email sender address, and some phishing attacks are designed to ensure the message looks like it’s from an official source. Recipients not trained to look for phishing emails click links that takes them to an attacker-controlled server. DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance) is a security framework that detects and stops these attacks.

DMARC is a set of cybersecurity configurations that use a combination of digital signatures (DKIM) and DNS verification using Sender Policy Framework (SPF). DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) adds public-private key encryption that adds a signature to the header in an email. The owner of a domain adds a verification key as a DNS entry and SPF protocols at the recipient email server perform a lookup for this verification entry. Only valid IPs can then send an email on behalf of the sender’s domain. SPF eliminates an attacker’s ability to send spoofed email messages.

DMARC works in conjunction with email filters and DNS-based content filters so that users are unable to access attacker-controlled websites. With DMARC, the messages should not be able to reach the user’s inbox. Messages blocked by DMARC rules are quarantined where the email administrator can review it for any false positives. Should a message return a false negative, the malicious content would reach the user’s inbox. DNS-based content filtering would trigger and block the user from accessing the website where an attacker phishes for user credentials.

Without the right cybersecurity tools in place, organizations are vulnerable to phishing scams. This malware could cost an enterprise millions in disaster recovery and ransom fees if they’re paid. The only way to avoid them is to have the right email security using DMARC and content filtering.

PhishTitan anti phishing filter checks every URL in an email against known blacklists - with 100% active web coverage. Protect your users from email links to malicious sites with PhishTitan. PhishTitan's sandboxing feature protects against breaches and sophisticated email attacks by providing a powerful environment to run in-depth, sophisticated analysis of unknown or suspicious programs and files.

Phishing attacks are highly complex and  on the rise. One of the most effective ways to protect against phishing scams is with a modern, robust email security solution such as PhishTitan.  PhishTitan utilizes an array of anti-phishing tools such as antivirus scanning, heuristic analysis, DMARC authentication and sandboxing.  Few vendors offer all of these solutions in one package.

What is a Phishing Filter?

Phishing is a standard method to deliver malware and ransomware to a corporate network and steal login credentials from employees. Phishing messages are often identifiable through malicious intent indicators, such as links to spoof landing pages or infected attachments. These indicators provide signals such as a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) pointing to the spoof website that steals login credentials and other data. An anti-phishing filter detects phishing elements such as malicious URIs by comparing the URI with a database of known phishing URIs. However, modern phishing attacks obfuscate these indicators of malicious intent, so advanced anti-phishing filters must apply advanced detection methods. Sophisticated anti-phishing techniques include AI to detect and filter phishing emails. AI-enabled anti-phishing filters can detect unusual patterns of activity, and natural language processing (NLP) can detect suspicious content and communications. These advanced anti-phishing solutions deploy multi-layered techniques to identify signals of phishing. Some phishing filters use automation rather than user input to ensure that human error is eliminated. Once a phishing filter identifies a potential phishing email, the filter will quarantine the email. This prevents infected or malicious emails from entering an employee's inbox. Conversely, some email filters also protect outbound emails, avoiding harm to the company brand by preventing spam from leaving the corporate perimeter. These email filters also perform DLP (data loss prevention) by identifying emails containing sensitive or proprietary data and stopping them before they cause harm.

What is an Email Phishing Filter?

Emails are an essential part of business communications. Around 347.3 billion emails are sent daily, and spam and phishing attempts are hidden within that vast amount of email communications: companies in the USA have about 8 billion spam emails to deal with daily. The onslaught of spam and phishing emails means that employees end up with inboxes full of unwanted, often malicious, emails. This can negatively impact employee productivity as employees plow through the mass of spam to find genuine business emails, perhaps even missing important emails amid spam. Email phishing filters are essential tools that facilitate seamless and secure modern email communications. Spam and phishing emails have become increasingly sophisticated and often utilize multiple attack scenarios to carry out a scam. The most effective way to deal with this level of sophistication is to use an advanced email phishing filter. The new generation of email phishing filters uses a multi-layered approach to identify and prevent spam and phishing emails. Advanced email phishing protection uses many protective layers, including AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP), to identify patterns in emails that conventional email filters would otherwise miss. These next-gen email phishing filtering solutions use predictive analysis to prevent zero-minute attacks that are otherwise challenging to detect. Using multiple layers of protection drastically increases the probability of capturing spam and phishing emails. For example, PhishTitan has a 99.9% capture rate.

Why Use a Phishing Filter?

Malicious URLs, website spoofing, and attempts to send infected attachments are all associated with phishing. The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) recorded the worst-ever period for phishing in the first quarter of 2023, with 1,624,144 phishing attacks. Phishing is successful and provides a reliable way for cybercriminals to gain unauthorized entry to corporate networks by allowing the theft of login credentials or the delivery of malware, most notably ransomware. Phishing is so successful that it is now the most common cause of credential theft, and stolen login credentials are the most used method to breach data. Companies typically experience around five phishing emails per day. A recent study found that over half of companies reported being victims of a spear-phishing attack resulting in infection with malware or viruses. Of these, almost half said the theft of sensitive data and login credentials. Smaller organizations are most at risk, with phishing scams targeting SMBs 350% more than larger enterprises. Cisco has found that in 86% of organizations, at least one user has attempted to connect to a spoof site via a malicious link in a phishing email. The onslaught of phishing emails in an organization means that more than security awareness training is needed to manage the mass number of phishing emails sent to employees. Also, spear-phishing, which targets specific employees, is very difficult for an individual to detect. It is, therefore, recommended to use a phishing filter as a layer of protection to minimize the risk of a phishing email entering an employee's inbox.

What is a Spear Phishing Filter?

Spear phishing is a highly targeted form of conventional email phishing. In 2022, half of organizations were victims of spear phishing, with the average company receiving five spear-phishing emails daily. Spear-phishing is based on social engineering; the attackers use surveillance and other tactics to understand their target deeply. These targets are usually specific roles in an organization, such as an administrator, someone in accounts payable, and a C-level executive. The spear-phishing email reflects this role, and a phishing exercise is designed to use the employee's position in the company. For example, accounts payable staff may be targeted as part of a Business Email Compromise (BEC) scam. The essential element of a spear-phishing email is that it is created around the target. The attackers likely know the target's name and may even have compromised another employee's email account to send emails from a legitimate company account. These social engineering and carefully composed phishing emails make these phishing scams more challenging to detect using conventional email filters. Instead, a spear phishing filter must apply advanced technologies such as AI and NLP (Natural Language Processing) to identify patterns in language and suspicious activity. As such, spear phishing filters are finely tuned to identify complex multi-part phishing attacks on targeted employees.

What does Anti-Spear-Phishing Protect Against?

Spear phishing targets specific roles in an organization. By creating phishing campaigns that focus on these particular employees, the success rate of a phishing attack is higher than the average traditional phishing email. Studies show that the click rate of a spear phishing email is over 53%, whereas the average click rate for standard mass-mailed phishing emails is 20%. Anti-spear-phishing tools work to detect spear-phishing attacks before they get a chance to enter the target employee's inbox. This catch-and-prevent approach requires advanced technologies such as AI and NLP (Natural Language Processing) to identify malicious emails created using sophisticated methods. Spear phishing emails have become increasingly complex and more prevalent in recent years. 

Some of the most insidious campaigns have involved spear-phishing. An example of a recent spear phishing campaign offers insight into how complex and focused these campaigns are. The Star Blizzard group uses spear phishing to attack defense industrial targets. The hacking group conducts deep reconnaissance on individuals before creating spear phishing emails. This level of intelligence allows the group to generate highly believable phishing emails, even going as far as creating fake social media profiles of associated personnel to add believability to spear phishing attempts. 

Once a rapport is established with the victim, the hacking group sends an email with a malicious link. If the link is clicked, the individual goes to a spoof website where the framework EvilGinx is used to harvest credentials and session cookies to bypass two-factor authentication. High complexity and careful attention to language mean that anti-spear-phishing protection must use advanced techniques to identify spear-phishing campaigns. Without anti-phishing protection, an organization is at high risk of malware infection, ransomware attacks, credential theft, data theft, and Business Email Compromise.

The APWG recorded the worst-ever period for phishing in the first quarter of 2023, with 1,624,144 phishing attacks.

What You Get When Using Phishing Protection

Phishing protection is essential in a world where 94% of malware is delivered via a phishing email. By using phishing protection, a company will significantly de-risk the likelihood of a variety of cyber-attack types, including:  

  • Business Email Compromise: The FBI has identified $51 billion worth of losses caused by Business Email Compromise (BEC). A BEC scam is typically associated with spear-phishing emails, CEO Fraud, and Whaling (a spear-phishing targeting C-level executives). 
  • Ransomware Infection: Almost three-quarters (72%) of businesses worldwide are affected by ransomware. Phishing is often the leading way to infect a company with ransomware.
  • Credential Theft: Phishing emails are the prime cause of login credential theft. A study found that 20% of employees will click phishing email links, and almost 68% will enter login credentials into a phishing website. Login credential theft leads to data theft, ransomware infection, and BEC scams.

Phishing protection that uses advanced techniques such as AI and NLP will prevent phishing messages from entering employees' inboxes. This single effort will significantly protect against all the malicious activity inherent in phishing emails. 

What You Get with Advanced Email Phishing Protection

recent study from Radicati warns about email phishing being a major email-borne threat for organizations of all sizes. The report highlights the importance of protecting against phishing email threats that are difficult to detect as they are often multi-part and complex. The report discusses "blended attacks" that use malicious worms and other self-propagating malware. Radicati warns that these attacks usually start with spam emails. Advanced email phishing protection prevents even the most complex of phishing threats. By using multiple layers of protective measures, including AI and NLP, advanced email phishing solutions can detect emerging threats and multi-part socially engineered phishing emails, such as cloning and spear-phishing. By deploying advanced email phishing protection, such as an ICES (Integrated Cloud Email Security) solution, a company will defend itself against persistent and tenacious targeting by cybercriminals. AI-enabled anti-phishing protection protects employees and businesses, thwarting attacks that take advantage of human behavior and the urge to click a malicious link in an email or download an attachment that may be infected with malware. Advanced email phishing prevention solutions are typically easy to deploy either in-house or via an MSP as a managed service. These ICES anti-phishing solutions are cloud-based, centrally managed, and updated. 

Almost three-quarters (72%) of businesses worldwide are affected by ransomware.

Examples of Anti-Phishing Technologies

Anti-phishing technologies include a Secure Email Gateway (SEG) and the more advanced, next-generation Integrated Cloud Email Security (ICES). SEG acts as a first line of defense against phishing and spam, with ICES augmenting the more conventional technologies inherent in an SEG with multi-layered, AI-enabled measures. SEG is often integrated software part of a productivity suite, like Microsoft 365. SEG can sometimes be a hardware device. Both an SEG and an ICES solution will monitor inbound and outbound emails. SEG uses a more static approach to phishing detection, whereas ICES uses dynamic measures for phishing detection and prevention. ICES solutions are cloud-based, utilizing AI, machine learning, and natural language processing (NLP) to identify sophisticated and multi-part phishing threats.

Advanced, multi-layered anti-phishing tools typically provide increasingly fine-grained protective measures that include the following:

  • Real-Time Blacklists (RBLs): Identify and block spam from recognized spam-supporting ISPs.
  • Bayesian Analysis: Self-learning that improves as it learns.
  • Auto Learning: AI is used to identify emerging cyber threats. AI uses pattern detection in real-time to detect zero-day threats.
  • Heuristics: Examines emails for suspicious elements such as malware.
  • Natural Language Processing (NLP): A dynamic technology that identifies difficult-to-identify behavioral and content patterns.
  • Data loss prevention (DLP): Protects outbound emails from sending malicious or sensitive content outside the corporate network.

Some of the Best Anti-Phishing Solutions

Many anti-phishing solutions exist in the marketplace, and deciding which is best for your organization can be challenging. However, with the advancement of complex phishing attacks that use social engineering and target specific employees, the best anti-phishing solutions should offer certain features. The following questions should be part of your anti-phishing evaluation:

  • Does the anti-phishing solution use AI to identify emerging threats and zero-day phishing? 
  • Can the anti-phishing solution identify complex, multi-part social engineering attacks that use phishing?
  • Can the anti-phishing solution use multiple layers of threat detection to catch spam and phishing?
  • Can the anti-phishing solution be easily deployed in-house or as a managed service?
  • What is the phishing and spam catch rate of the anti-phishing solution?

Several comparison portals offer user insights into some of the best anti-phishing solutions. Using comparison sites such as G2, Peerspot, and Gartner provides an analysis of many of the anti-phishing solutions available. For example, G2 recognized PhishTitan as a leader in five categories in the G2 Crowd Grid® Winter 2023 Report.

Features of Phishing Protection Software?

Phishing protection software should offer multiple layers of phishing protection that include the following:

  • Harvesting/dictionary attack protection.
  • Collaborative spam fingerprint checks.
  • RBL tests (real-time blackhole list).
  • AI-driven threat intelligence, with rule-based spam scoring trained using a massive threat corpus.
  • Allow and block list filters.
  • Real-time threat analysis driven by AI.
  • Time of click protection that rewrite’s URLs, checking the associated website. 
  • Link Lock service to ensure that the company remains protected even if a recipient clicks a URL in a malicious email.
  • Data loss prevention (DLP) to protect outbound emails from sending malicious or sensitive content outside the corporate network.

Typical features of phishing protection software include the following: 

  • Cloud-based, easy to deploy, administer, and update via an MSP or in-house.
  • Excellent catch rates (>99%) for spam, viruses, malware, and other email threats with low false positive rates.
  • Centralized control of anti-spam policies and permissions.
  • Automation of phishing protection to ensure that accidents and human error are eliminated.
  • Automated and comprehensive reporting for actionable insights and compliance evidence.
  • Easy to set up, simple to configure, and fast to deploy.
  • Centralized web console with privileged access control for administrators.
  • Fully automated updates deployed centrally.
  • Support for local language.
  • No hardware or endpoint software is required, and the operating system is agnostic.

96% of data breaches start with a phishing email.

Benefits of a Phishing Filter

More than 90% of all cyberattacks start with a phishing email. Cybercrime is a powerful tool for criminals looking to steal data or demand ransom money. Phishing continues to be the most common form of cyberattacks, however, phishing can be prevented by implementing an email phishing filter for email protection.

The main reason an organisation deploys an anti-phishing filter is to protect the business and its employees from phishing attacks. However, there are lots of benefits of an email phishing filter. Here are some of the many benefits:

1. Protecting Users On and Off the Network

Remote working is known to be a strain on communicating and collaboration in the workplace, hence, it’s now trickier for employees to identify a phishing email when working remotely. Where an employee would previously ask a colleague sitting next to them about the suspiciousness of an email, that has been removed since remote working. However, with an anti-phishing filter, employees will be protected from phishing emails no matter their work location, whether they are in the office or working from home.

2. Increase in Employee Productivity

Implementing an email phishing filter will significantly reduce the number of emails an employee will receive. This means that they will spend less time sieving through emails, deleting spam emails, and more time working or responding to real emails. Systems administrators will also see a rise in productivity, as a phishing email protection solution will manage all spam emails, instead of a singular person continuously updating whitelists and blacklists.

3. Preventing BEC attacks (Business Email Compromise)

An advanced phishing email protection will not only stop phishing emails entering a user's mailbox but will identify if an account has been compromised. An anti-phishing filter such as SpamTitan Cloud not only scans inbound emails for suspicious messages but scans outbound emails. If an account has been comprised, the anti-phishing filter will block emails from being sent and will protect the domain authority.

4. Data Loss Prevention

One of the risks associated with phishing attacks is data loss. Business data and personal data are extremely valuable to cybercriminals as they can either (1) sell the information on the dark web or (2) demand a ransom to restore the data. Consequently, with an email phishing filter, phishing emails are blocked, reducing the risk of an employee clicking on a suspicious link, resulting in a cybercriminal installing malware onto the device to gain access to sensitive data.

5. Ransomware Prevention

Similar to data loss prevention, if criminals can’t get access to sensitive information or gain access to business systems and infrastructure via phishing attacks, the risk of ransomware is diminished. It’s important to note that organisations should use a layered defense approach for ransomware prevention, and not solely rely on a phishing filter. A DNS filter will prevent employees from accessing malicious websites to help the defense against ransomware.

Phishing is one of the most common and successful ways to infect an organization with malware. Employees instructed not to click on URLs in unexpected emails still can't seem to resist the temptation. Once clicked these malicious URLs can lead to data breaches, ransomware and other devastating threats. PhishTitan is an advanced phishing protection solution from TitanHQ. Discover how PhishTitan anti phishing filter can further protect your organistion from phishing. Learn more

Hear from our Customers

Great Service and Excellent Support

What do you like best about SpamTitan Email Security? I like how easy the service is to manage and the fact that I get a real person every time I have to call support is excellent, real people that work diligently to solve your issues and answer your questions. What do you dislike about SpamTitan Email Security? I have no issues at this time. I also have yet to find a downside of this product. Recommendations to others considering SpamTitan Email Security: Just buy it! Don't let the low cost compared to others scare you away. This is a top notch enterprise service with people that actually care. What problems is SpamTitan Email Security solving and how is that benefiting you? Having moved from an ancient on-premises system I have found spam numbers drastically dropping with this service due to the RBL blocking. Benefits include ease of management, real support, and additional blocking tools.

Barry B.

Corporate Network Administrator

Nice product, tried many others

I tried a bunch of products before purchasing this and i would make the same decision again. The support has been great, my users like the ability to check on their own quarantine, the email digest has been popular.

Bill

Systems Admin

Best spam filter we’ve ever used.

What do you like best about SpamTitan Email Security? As an IT guy, I like the granular nature of the configuration options. What problems is SpamTitan Email Security solving and how is that benefiting you? Making us a bit more ""sticky"" with customers as we white label our reports. It is blocking more viruses and spam than Microsoft's.

Michael Z.

Partner

Email Security Deployment Made Easy

What do you like best about SpamTitan Email Security? Deployment and provision were so easy. In a matter of hours, I had my new email security in place. The administration is so intuitive and really easy to use compared to others. Recommendations to others considering SpamTitan Email Security: Do not think twice, it is the best solution and at an excellent price. What problems is SpamTitan Email Security solving and how is that benefiting you? First availability of the antispam service, my previous provider had a lot of outages, second the ease of use for the end-users and how they can manage their own rules in a few clicks, also reduce to a minimum the tickets to the help desk to block or unblock senders or domains

Carlos C.

Director Regional de TI

Top quality service. Impossible to do without it!

What do you like best about SpamTitan Email Security? Simple, efficient, effective, many features that can be customized and parameterized by user, domain and globally. Indispensable tool for working with confidence with emails. What do you dislike about SpamTitan Email Security? Nothing! There is everything you need to better manage email traffic with security to the full satisfaction of all users who only receive important emails and can still check blocked emails for false positives. What problems is SpamTitan Email Security solving and how is that benefiting you? Spam, virus and malicious links are just an old memory of a bygone era. Phishing, business email compromise, and zero day attacks are now under control in all emails.

Igor G.

Internet & Cloud Services Manager

Which Products Help Protect Users who are Prone to Clicking on Phishing Scams?

There are two ways to prevent users from clicking on phishing emails. The first is to prevent malicious emails from arriving in the inbox in the first place. The second is to provide point-of-click protection for users who accidentally click on malicious emails that get through.

Adequately protecting your organization against phishing threats requires a multi-layered defense. First, your phishing protection solution should keep malicious emails out of users’ inboxes and prevent users from accidentally clicking on malicious links even if they get through.

Does Filtering Phishing Emails Work?

Yes! The vast majority of phishing emails come with tell-tale signs of malicious intent. Technologies like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC allow email providers to automatically filter out harmful emails that human users may not recognize.

However, these technologies need to be adapted to the unique security profile of the organization itself. For example, they can’t prevent credential-based attacks and may not be effective against sophisticated social engineering scams. That’s why organizations need multiple layers to their security strategy.

Is phishing filter technology effective against all cyberattacks? No. Even though nine out of ten cyberattacks start with a phishing email, filtering your email will not prevent every attack. However, safeguarding your email users against phishing will make it much harder for cybercriminals to launch successful attacks.

When combined with a multi-layered security strategy, phishing filters help reduce the risk of cyberattacks and dramatically improve the organization’s overall security posture. High-performance phishing filters are just one part of a well-rounded security tech stack.

How Does an Anti-Phishing Filter Protect Users from Malware?

Malware is one of the attack vectors that phishing filters are highly effective against. Since most cyberattacks start with phishing email, keeping malicious emails out of users’ inboxes is an effective way to boost security. Users who don’t see malicious emails won’t be tempted to click on them.

Often, phishing emails contain a malicious attachment or a link to download malware. Preventing email users from interacting with these emails is an effective way to protect them against malware attacks.

What Happens when Phishing Filters Incorrectly Block an Incoming Email?

False positives happen when security technologies incorrectly flag legitimate data as malicious. This risk comes with all security solutions – not just phishing filters. However, high-quality security products produce fewer false positives than lower-quality competitors.

When PhishTitan users detect a false positive, they can flag it and return it to the user’s inbox. PhishTitan's  AI-powered phishing filter constantly observes incoming emails and uses that data to improve its performance over time. The platform adapts as users flag false positives, growing more accurate over time.

What Separates the Best Anti-Phishing Solutions from the Rest?

High-quality anti-phishing solutions must protect email users by preventing malicious emails from entering their inboxes, and providing point-of-click protection against malicious URLs and attachments embedded in emails. These two features are essential for adequate email security.

The best anti-phishing solutions use AI to adapt to user behaviors and improve security performance over time. This allows them to process fewer false positives while adapting to the organization’s unique security profile with greater precision and accuracy.

Do small organizations need an email phishing filter? Yes! 43% of cyberattacks target small businesses, and phishing threats can be particularly severe. This is because most cybercriminals use sophisticated tools to automate phishing workflows. As a result, they can afford to send millions of phishing emails to small businesses every day, but their targets can’t afford to let a single one through.

Large enterprises can afford to deploy in-house security solutions that small organizations can’t. This makes it much harder for small and mid-sized businesses to achieve excellent security performance independently. Reputable anti-email phishing tools like PhishTitan allow small businesses to gain enterprise-level security.

Doesn’t Microsoft 365 Already Have the Best Anti-Phishing Solutions Built in?

Microsoft is responsible for many impressive security technologies, but phishing protection is not one of them. Microsoft 365 doesn’t consistently keep phishing emails out of users’ inboxes and doesn’t offer reliable point-of-click protection to prevent malware infection. As a result, Microsoft 365 users need more protection.

PhishTitan builds on the capabilities Microsoft includes in its productivity and email platform. It enables Microsoft users to securely interact with emails, safe knowing that harmful content has already been blocked. Additional point-of-click protection prevents users from accidentally opening malicious links.

Can Anti-Phishing for Email Prevent Every Fraudulent Message?

Cybercriminals are constantly innovating new ways to commit fraud. Security solutions are only partially foolproof. However, organizations that invest in high-quality technology backed by reputable vendors have a much better security posture than those that don’t.

Technology is one of many layers in the multi-layered security strategy. User education and company culture also play a role. For example, preventing malicious emails from landing in users’ inboxes is an important and effective security policy, but no single technology will avoid every kind of attack.

Susan Morrow

Susan Morrow

  • DATA PROTECTION
  • EMAIL PHISING
  • EMAIL SECURITY

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is an Email Phishing Filter?

Cyber-criminals use phishing email messages to steal corporate network credentials or install malware on a user’s local machine. An email phishing filter blocks malicious messages from reaching the intended recipient and protects an organization from data breaches and insider threats. For every email blocked by an email phishing filter, an organization reduces its cyber risks.

What are Good Anti-Phishing Solutions?

Anti-phishing solutions must block malicious email messages from reaching their intended recipient. Organizations can implement failsafe options such as antivirus in case of a false negative, but a good anti-phishing solution uses artificial intelligence to block sophisticated zero-day attacks. PhishTitan is a proven well-rated anti-spam solution used by enterprises and managed service providers.

What Does a Phishing Filter Do?

Instead of allowing users to receive spam and malicious email messages, a phishing filter blocks phishing, malware, or email messages with malicious attachments from reaching the intended recipient. Artificial intelligence (AI) is used to detect malicious messages, including zero-day threats. Malicious messages are sent to a quarantine section where administrators can review them.

Which Products Help Protect Users Who are Prone to Clicking on Phishing Scams?

There are two ways to prevent users from clicking on phishing emails. The first is to prevent malicious emails from arriving in the inbox in the first place. The second is to provide point-of-click protection for users who accidentally click on malicious emails that get through. Adequately protecting your organization against phishing threats requires a multi-layered defense.

Does Filtering Phishing Emails Work?

Yes! The vast majority of phishing emails come with tell-tale signs of malicious intent. Technologies like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC allow email providers to automatically filter out harmful emails that human users may not recognize.

What Happens when Phishing Filters Incorrectly Block an Incoming Email?

False positives happen when security technologies incorrectly flag legitimate data as malicious. This risk comes with all security solutions – not just phishing filters. However, high-quality security products produce fewer false positives than lower-quality competitors.

What Separates the Best Anti-Phishing Solutions from the Rest?

High-quality anti-phishing solutions must protect email users by preventing malicious emails from entering their inboxes, and providing point-of-click protection against malicious URLs and attachments embedded in emails. These two features are essential for adequate email security.

Doesn’t Microsoft 365 Already Have the Best Anti-Phishing Solutions Built in?

Microsoft is responsible for many impressive security technologies, but phishing protection is not one of them. Microsoft 365 doesn’t consistently keep phishing emails out of users’ inboxes and doesn’t offer reliable point-of-click protection to prevent malware infection. As a result, Microsoft 365 users need more protection.

Can Anti-Phishing for Email Prevent Every Fraudulent Message?

Cybercriminals are constantly innovating new ways to commit fraud. Security solutions are only partially foolproof. However, organizations that invest in high-quality technology backed by reputable vendors have a much better security posture than those that don’t.

What is the Best Phishing Protection?

The PhishTitan email filtering solution is a proven cybersecurity tool used by several TitanHQ enterprise customers and managed service providers. It’s well-rated across several sites, and customers praise its ease of use, customer support, and flexibility. PhishTitan is one of the top email filter solutions on the market, and it currently provides protection for large and small businesses.

What is the Best Anti-Phishing Strategy?

Security awareness training is essential for cybersecurity, but relying on users to recognize phishing adds the risk of a data breach from insider threats. Instead of relying on users to recognize phishing, the best anti-phishing strategy is to incorporate an email filtering solution that blocks malicious messages from reaching their intended employee recipients.

What is Anti-Phishing?

Phishing is the largest threat to an enterprise environment, so anti-phishing strategies stop phishing messages from resulting in a data breach. An anti-phishing solution stops email messages from reaching employee inboxes, so corporations significantly reduce their cyber risks by implementing an email filtering solution.  Email filtering solutions such as PhishTitan stop malicious messages from being a risk of a data breach.

What Features are in the Best Anti-Phishing Software?

As you search for the best anti-phishing software, find a solution that has features such as artificial intelligence, flexible configurations, notifications to help users, security awareness training incorporated with filtering solutions, good customer support, and operating system agnostic. Anti-phishing software such as PhishTitan is an added layer of security for compliance and data protection.

Do I Need Malware and Phishing Protection?

Any organization that stores sensitive data needs malware and phishing protection. Most organizations have at least some digital assets, so anti-phishing and malware protection are necessary. Malware and phishing are the biggest threats to business data privacy and protection, but the right cybersecurity strategies and email filtering solutions will help reduce the risk of a data breach from these threats.

How can Phishing Solutions Help with Data Protection?

A phishing solution detects any malicious message used for phishing or delivery of malware from an attachment and sends it to a quarantine. Phishing solutions reduce the risks of an enterprise being the victim of a data breach or critical downtime from a ransomware attack. Without phishing solutions, organizations must rely on employees to detect malicious messages, and this increases the risks of a data breach.

Will Email Phishing Solutions Protect my Data?

Every enterprise should use layered cybersecurity strategies. Email phishing solutions are one layer, but this layer is the first defense against malicious email messages. An email phishing filtering solution blocks malicious messages from reaching an employee’s inbox, which removes the threat of phishing altogether. Be prepared for false negatives, but phishing filters block malicious messages from reaching employee inboxes a majority of the time.

What Does Phishing Email Protection Do?

A phishing email protection solution blocks malware, ransomware, malicious scripts, and messages containing embedded links pointing to a phishing website from being sent to employee inboxes. By blocking malicious email messages, organizations reduce the risks of a data breach from email-based threats and add a layer of security to a data protection strategy.

What Does Anti-Spear Phishing Do?

Spear phishing threats target specific high-privileged users within an organization. An anti-spear phishing solution blocks spear phishing messages from reaching employee inboxes. Organizations should use anti-spear phishing software to protect data from email-based attacks and insider threats. Without anti-spear phishing, stolen high-privileged credentials could lead to a massive data breach.

Does Phishing Filters Block Ransomware?

The primary method for ransomware delivery is email. Using targeted spear phishing, attackers send malicious attachments to users or trick them into downloading ransomware on an attacker-controlled domain. Phishing filters quarantine messages meant to deliver ransomware to an organization’s employees. Employees never see the email messages, but administrators can review them in quarantine.

What are the Best Anti-Phishing Solutions?

Several anti-phishing solutions offer features to block messages, but only PhishTitan is a proven highly rated anti-phishing solution that blocks most phishing and malware threats sent using email. PhishTitan closely works with security awareness training solutions to gamify phishing alerts and remove responsibility from employees to help protect them from being the next victim.

What Phishing Filter is Related to SafeTitan?

SafeTitan is a TitanHQ security awareness training solution, and PhishTitan is TitanHQ’s email security software. Both SafeTitan and PhishTitan are related but different products. They work well together to offer organizations an effective way to train employees to identify a phishing threat but automatically block phishing threats using artificial intelligence to reduce inboxing of malicious email messages.

What is Phishing Filter Technology?

Phishing filter technology analyzes incoming organization email messages and uses artificial intelligence to detect potential threats. If a message is considered a threat, the phishing filter technology sends it to a quarantine where administrators can review it. Standard business email is sent to the intended recipient. By blocking malicious messages, organizations greatly reduce the risks of a data breach from malware, ransomware, and phishing sent in emails.

Do I Need Anti-Phishing for Email?

Phishing threats are the start of many of the world’s most damaging ransomware and data breaches. Anti-phishing for email blocks malicious messages from reaching the inboxes of targeted employees that could turn into victims of ransomware, phishing, malware, and other threats. By blocking email messages from reaching user inboxes, the organization protects data from many of today’s current threats and tomorrow’s zero-day threats.

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