5 Reasons Why businesses Should Protect Themselves From Phishing Attacks

Phishing attacks are the most familiar form of cyber-attack and can have a devastating effect on a business, but relatively few people have a detailed understanding of what a phishing attack is or how it can be prevented.

To give a brief definition, a phishing attack is a malicious message which can be sent via email or other online messaging platforms such as Facebook or WhatsApp. These messages attempt to trick the recipient into handing over important information – most commonly private banking details.

Although phishing scams target individuals, a victim could be connected to a business, which potentially puts the scammer inside private email chains and, therefore, closer to confidential business information.

Here are five reasons why businesses should protect themselves from phishing attacks:

1. Phishing attacks can infiltrate your entire company

Phishing attacks are relatively simple to understand, but as with most cyber scams, you might think that you would be able to spot a phishing email if you were sent one. The reality is far less clear-cut.

Simply by believing that a scammer couldn’t trick them into handing over information, many people leave themselves vulnerable to attack. Scammers prey on their victims’ ignorance, so by believing you can’t be targeted, you play into their hands. This is because phishing scams are increasingly difficult to spot, as scammers pose as trusted third parties like friends, family, and even work colleagues.

This last point is especially pertinent for business owners. If a phishing scammer can trick a single member of staff (via a work email address, for example), they could target other organization members far more easily.

One of the ways they can do this is by using the compromised email address to tricking other colleagues into handing over information. They wouldn’t immediately suspect an internal email address of spreading viruses, so an entire company could quickly be compromised. To find out more about phishing attacks, click here.

2. You may suffer reputational damage

Another reason why businesses should beware of phishing scams is that they can cause serious reputational damage. If a company accidentally leaks sensitive customer information, for instance, it may never win back the trust of its market. This is especially true in the healthcare or finance industry, where customer information is extremely valuable by its very nature.

While money can always be recovered, the reputation of a business can be irreversibly tarnished if it is seen to lack enough security, forethought, and integrity to protect itself (and its customers) from a phishing attack.

3. Private corporate information could be leaked

On a related note, it should be worth considering that a phishing attack can quickly expose confidential corporate information.

This information could include the passwords to private accounts (such as bank accounts, cloud accounts, and social media accounts). It does not need to be emphasized that if a hacker got hold of this information, it could spell disaster for a business.

Similarly, private financial information (such as how much you are buying materials for, how much you are paying certain employees, or other such data) could be leaked and lead to all manner of internal and external issues.

4. Your business could be sapped of productivity

Suppose a phishing scam attacks your business, and it successfully infiltrates your internal processes. In that case, you will have to dedicate a lengthy amount of time to fight the attack, resetting your account passwords, attempting to retrieve lost information, and trying to improve your cybersecurity capabilities.

All this can be highly destructive for your productivity and cause an enormous distraction to your employees.

After all, if they can’t access certain cloud servers or email accounts because the passwords have been changed or the accounts have been corrupted, then they will have no way of completing tasks and doing their jobs properly.

Furthermore, it will take a long time to be able to educate your employees on new work processes if you want to prevent an attack from happening again. This may involve hiring a cyber security expert to teach your team how to avoid an attack from happening again.

All of this will lower the productivity of your business and leave you playing catch up in the long term.

5. You could lose a great deal of money

Although sensitive customer or corporate data is often the target of phishing scams, you can’t rule out simple financial theft. If a phishing scammer gets hold of your company (or personal) bank details, then you may find that your account is at least partially emptied.

Naturally, it doesn’t need to be emphasized how damaging this can be, especially if you are a small business.