The Threat of The Digital Era

In today’s digital landscape, phishing remains one of the most prevalent and damaging cyber threats to businesses regardless of their size. These attacks are designed to deceive users into revealing sensitive information. This is commonly done by impersonating trusted sources through a combination of emails, SMS, or fake websites.

These attacks are extremely common and often target login credentials, financial data, access to internal systems or attempt to deceive the user into sending money from business accounts.

These social engineering methods can often bypass traditional security tools and can leverage the publicly available information of the individual they’re impersonating. It’s critical that your team learns what to look for, as they’re often the last line of defence protecting you against cyber threats.

How Phishing Works

Criminals targeting you with phishing emails will utilise social engineering and various techniques to pretend to be a manager, service provider (e.g. Microsoft), team member, client or other trusted party to exploit the existing relationship.

Often this is presented in the form of a “phishing email”, as it’s easy for a criminal to change their email display name, and use a stolen email signature or other information gathered to convince you that they’re legitimate.

Common Phishing Tactics

• Links to fake login pages mimicking trusted platforms.
• Urgent messages prompting immediate action.
• Spoofed email addresses which appear legitimate.

Identifying a Phishing Email

The below example is an obvious and very common type of phishing email. These days, scams are harder to detect. Criminals can use hacked email accounts for legitimacy or to bypass security filtering. It’s also becoming increasingly common for scammers to use AI to find personal information, and craft targeted phishing scam emails en masse.

Looking at the above example, at first it appears to be legitimate with nothing out of the ordinary. A few things reveal that this is a phishing email.

1. The sense of urgency is the first red flag. Often scammers create a sense of urgency and then direct you to click a link or provide some kind of information.
2. Hovering over the “safe” https:// link without clicking reveals a suspicious “spapparelsindia.in” domain which wouldn’t be used by Microsoft.
3. The wording of the email is also strange and not what you’d expect from an automated Microsoft email.

User Awareness Training

If the above example isn’t something you’re confident your team could easily identify as a scam, then additional training will be essential to protect your business in the current digital landscape – as it’s only a basic example of one of many social engineering threats businesses deal with daily.

To protect themselves from these ongoing threats, businesses can take advantage of quick and individualised training to learn how to identify them. This is then combined with targeted (and safe) phishing campaigns that are designed to test user awareness and provide them with experience at recognising these themselves.

This approach to training ensures that your team is not only aware of cyber risks but also equipped to handle them effectively.

Cyber Threats Are Evolving – Your Defences Should Too

In addition to ensuring your team has the required knowledge to protect the business, if your business is also experiencing a high volume of phishing or scam emails, it may indicate deeper issues with your email filtering, domain security, or public exposure.

Altitude Innovations can provide a consultation to assess your current configuration and recommend strategies to reduce or eliminate these threats.

We can assist you with:

• Delivering targeted training and phishing simulations
• Reviewing your email security configuration
• Implementing advanced filtering tools and protections
• Strengthening domain protection (e.g., SPF, DKIM, DMARC)
• Building a resilient cybersecurity culture

Let’s work together to strengthen your business, email, and user security.