Is there any doubt that training employees about phishing would help reduce the malware damage? Of course there’s also no surprise in a recent Verizon report which indicated that 89% of phishing attacks were send by organized crime and only 9% state-affiliated actors. Verizon ‘s  2016 Data Breach Investigations Reports included the following Recommended Controls:

Filter it! Filter it real good!  –“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” It was good advice when Ben said it and so it remains. The first opportunity to defend against email-borne threats is (thankfully) before a human can interact with it. Email filtering is your buddy in this fight and you need to have an understanding of your current solution, and test its implementation.

Talk amongst yourselves (I’m verklempt)!  –Provide employees with awareness training and information so they can tell if there is something ‘phishy’ (couldn’t resist) going on. Also, provide them with a means for reporting these events. We recommend a button on their taskbar, but whatever works for you.

One click does not a catastrophe make.  –So, it snuck past your email filters and someone went clicky-clicky. There is still ample opportunity to limit the impact. Assuming the organization’s “seekrit stuff” isn’t resident on the initial foothold, make it hard to pivot from the user device to other assets in the organization. Protect the rest of your network from compromised desktops and laptops by segmenting the network and implementing strong authentication between the user networks and anything of importance. Static passwords are adorable, but sophisticated attackers don’t just bypass them, they utilize them to advance their attack.

Keep your eye on the ball. –You increase your chances of catching signs that you have fallen victim to a phishing attack if you monitor outbound traffic for suspicious connections and potential exfiltration of data to remote hosts.

Training, training, training is essential to reduce phishing damage!

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