What is an Anti-Phishing Filter?

Phishing messages typically contain indicators of malicious intent, such as links to spoof landing pages; these links have a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) that points to the landing page used to steal login credentials and other data. An anti-phishing filter detects malicious URIs by comparing them to a database of known phishing URIs. Advanced anti-phishing filters use AI-enabled measures to detect and filter malicious emails, using multiple techniques to look for signals of phishing. Some anti-phishing filters rewrite all link URLs and use “time-of-click” analysis to protect against links to websites that appear to be safe but are later weaponized.

 

Why Do you Need an Email Phishing Filter?

Companies and the public have seen a 4.3% increase in emails sent and received, totaling 347.3 billion daily. Additionally, in January 2023, the USA had 8 billion spam emails daily. These levels are backed by research from the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) showing a 7% increase in credential phishing targeting enterprise users; because 90% of data breaches begin with a phishing email, phishing filters are an important way to manage threats within the vast volumes of emails. Email phishing filters help with both Inbound Email Filtering to prevent cyber-attacks and Outbound Email Filtering to ensure an organization maintains a positive reputation by stopping any inadvertent spam or malicious content being sent in a company’s name.

 

What is Email Phishing Protection?

Malicious emails are becoming more sophisticated and require a multi-layered approach to prevent attacks. Email phishing uses emails and social engineering to initiate a longer attack chain leading to lost credentials, ransomware infection, and scams such as Business Email Compromise (BEC). It is, therefore, essential to stop this entry point into the corporate network. Effective email phishing protection involves using an advanced, AI-enabled email filtering solution, predictive analysis to prevent zero-minute attacks, DNS filtering, and other human-centric measures such as employee phishing training and security awareness training. By applying layers of protection, even evolving threats, such as zero-minute and zero-day attacks, can be prevented.

 

Traditional vs. Advanced Anti-Phishing Filters

Traditional anti-phishing filters ​​scan the source code of email content and landing pages to detect known malicious signatures. However, attackers who have evolved tactics to evade traditional phishing detection have circumvented this static detection method. For example, polymorphic malware and content can generate undetectable dynamic signatures that fool conventional anti-phishing filters. This ability to rapidly change malware signatures has led to the development of advanced anti-phishing tools. These advanced email security solutions are dynamic, using AI-driven techniques such as deep learning, machine learning, and visual learning. These techniques provide a modern method to detect dynamically evolving security threats as attackers adjust their approaches.

 

An Example of an Advanced Email Phishing Filter

SpamTitan is an example of an advanced email phishing filter. To detect phishing emails, SpamTitan uses several techniques:

• 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-enable to pre-empt cyberthreats and thought pattern detection in real-time.
• Heuristics: examines emails for suspicious elements such as malware.

 

Comprehensive Anti-Phishing

Successful anti-phishing requires a comprehensive set of tools to detect and prevent insidious and sophisticated attacks. These tools include the following:

Phishing filter: a first line of defense anti-phishing tool. Detects and prevents phishing emails from landing in an employee’s inbox.

DNS Filter: this specialist filter blocks access to a malicious landing page by checking a URL in an email link against a ‘blocklist’ of URLs. Advanced  DNS filters, such as WebTitan DNS Filter, use AI to update the threat list continuously..

Phishing training for employees: phishing simulation platforms provide a centralized mechanism to generate, track, and tailor simulated phishing emails to teach employees how to spot phishing messages.

Security awareness: training employees in security usually goes together with phishing training to extend their understanding of their role in keeping safe email use.

 

How are Anti-Phishing Tools Implemented and Managed?

Anti-phishing tools are typically implemented and managed by an in-house IT department, a vendor as a SaaS service, or a managed service provider (MSP). Advanced and modern anti-phishing tools are cloud-based and centrally implemented and managed. Anti-phishing and email filters, for example, should be deployed using a Software as a Service (SaaS) model to provide fast delivery and centrally managed updates. An SMB has access to enterprise-grade anti-phishing solutions through an MSP.

 

Where can I get Anti-Phishing Support?

Access to efficient and reliable support when using anti-phishing software is essential. TitanHQ provides world-class levels of support for our anti-phishing tools. We also ensure that MSPs delivering anti-phishing tools to clients are fully supported.