What Is Phishing?

Phishing is a form of cybercrime wherein victims are deceived through emails, chats, or calls sent by someone who is pretending to be a member of a legitimate organization or someone that the victim knows. The main goal of phishing is to trick users into performing activities like downloading a file, clicking harmful links, or visiting a fake website. These activities, once done, will compel the victim to disclose personal information that can lead to identity theft as well as divulge credentials that can enable unauthorized activities like online fund transfer and purchasing.

In today’s digital society, phishing has become one of the top cybercrimes across the globe.

Email Phishing in Today's World

In today’s digital society, phishing has become one of the top cybercrimes across the globe. It has been found that in more than 55 million emails, one in every 99 is a phishing attack. Aside from using email as the main platform for phishing, this type of cyberattack is also done via phone calls, pop-ups, Wi-Fi connections, and others. Furthermore, despite implementing strict and rigorous training for employees and adequate knowledge of digital natives, it is still known that 97% of individuals are not able to distinguish a phishing scam.

Ways to Recognize Phishing

There are numerous tips available online that can help one identify if he or she is being phished. Some of these include:

• The email was sent from a public domain - Credible and large corporations do not utilize public email domains for their electronic mail activities. One easy way to identify if the sender is credible is if the domain name, which is the bit after the @symbol, is the same as the sender of the email. In contrast, once the email was sent from an address that does not match the sender, chances are it is a phishing activity.
  
  

• A malicious link or an attachment is present in an email -  As phishing becomes multi-platform, one quick way to figure out whether a text message, direct social media message, or post is a part of a phishing activity is when it contains a link or attachment that asks the victim to download or directs him to a different website. These are payloads that are primarily geared towards gathering the victim’s basic information that will be used for illegal activities.
  
  

• The message elicits a sense of urgency -  Emails and messages for phishing are usually crafted with a sense of urgency as the central theme. These messages either inform the victims of an emergency or serious news. It also attempts to compel the victim to act immediately before it’s too late. This can be in terms of availing a promo, the expiration of a subscription, an additional bonus, and others.

What Is Phishing Protection? 

Equipping oneself or employees, in the case of companies, with basic and vital information regarding phishing and how to combat it is a good preventive measure. But there are other companies that have email phishing protection or security measures that aim to minimize and eventually eliminate phishing attacks on their employees. This can include software that can shield employees from receiving suspicious emails, blocking harmful emails, halting attachments, and detecting indicators of dishonesty and fraud.

Best Solution Against Phishing

As phishing has become so rampant, so have the numerous digital solutions for this specific digital dilemma. In the Philippines, Yubico, with its registered Yubikey, has a feature of communicating with one’s device when phishing starts to happen. As a physical security key, Yubikey does not just protect one when it comes to hackers but also phishing. When users of Yubico security key click on malicious links and are prompted to log in with personal information, users must first authenticate their Yubikey. As a security key, the Yubikey together with the device will decline to authenticate the link or the website even with a legitimate SSL security certificate once it identifies it as bogus.

Defend your data against Phishing with Yubikey Security Key

As a hardware security key, users are not just protected from digital assailants with its two-factor authentication and multi-factor authentication, but also guaranteed that they are safeguarded from possible phishing activities.

As one of the most used communication platforms in various industries, academia, and even personal lives, emails have become a cultural, social, and vital messaging tool. With its prominence, hackers and other digital assailants have taken advantage of its pervasiveness to commit online crimes such as phishing. 

That is why it is important to arm ourselves with knowledge in order not to be preyed upon by those who practice phishing. But aside from having knowledge, protective solutions such as Yubikey, with its variety of products that include YubiKey 5 NFC, YubiKey 5Ci, YubiKey 5C NFC, and YubiKey 5 Nano, are also considered to be preventive solutions that can eliminate the chances of being a victim of phishing. 

If one is looking for a seamless and more advanced product, Yubico has also designed the Yubico U2F Security Key, Yubico Security Key NFC, and YubiKey Bio. These modern solutions are totally tailored to fix modern digital problems such as phishing.