Targeting People, Not the Infrastructure
Historically, many cyberattacks tended to be technology-focused and required specialized knowledge to expertly fool a network into believing the attacker was an authorized user. Spoofing, man-in-the-middle (LAN or Wi-Fi), DNS, and other attacks require actual skill (and a bit of malice) to properly execute.
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Phishing attacks are a different breed of threat, however, because they are focused on targeting the people of an organization versus attacking the infrastructure.
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Launching a Phishing Attack Is Scarily Easy
Phishing attacks do not have to be complicated. Merely send a link by email, get the user to click on the link, and create a web page that looks real enough to trick the user into entering their credentials. [Read our Phishing eBook]
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With that method, a bad actor can pick up ready-made software, pull together a target email list, and start a phishing campaign in a few minutes—no network certification required. The rapid speed of attack creation enables cybercriminals to launch thousands of credential-stealing websites every day.
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Once an attacker is inside the network, they can move laterally across the organization to probe for weak points and troves of valuable information.
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Phishing Through the Eyes of a Hacker
While the tactic is highly effective against legacy cybersecurity gateways, cloud-based isolation provides a space (away from your organization’s network) where the phishing threat can be contained by limiting the ability of end-users to input their credentials into suspicious websites.
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To explore phishing threats, our security team created a video to demonstrate this attack method’s ease of implementation. Watch the video above to learn how Menlo Security helps to safeguard your network with cloud-based isolation.
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To learn more about email phishing, download our eBook: Protecting Against Email Threats.