In the cybersecurity domain, phishing is not a new matter of concern. In our previous blog posts, we have talked about the rising sophistication of modern threat elements. But the nature of data breaches and malware infections due to phishing has remained the same since the time cybercrime gained momentum. This loosely translates to the fact that there has been a lack of efficient phishing mitigation tools in the disposal of enterprise security teams.
As per Verizon, 92% of data breaches on business networks are results of successful spear-phishing attempts.
What is Phishing?
In its many forms, phishing is essentially email fraud. It works by tricking email recipients into opening malicious attachments that masquerade as an urgent or trust-worthy document or clicking on a link that is loaded with malware, ready to infect and take down the entire security network of the organization. Spear-phishing and whaling are considered to be the most successful types of phishing tactics as these have claimed a great number of victims.
According to industry statistics, 48% of malicious email attachments are MS-Word files.
As unbelievable as it may sound, even the tech-savvy workforce generation can fall prey to smart phishing attempts by hackers. One of the main reasons that phishing still claims a large number of victims is the lack of security awareness and training. Organizations need to change their approach from considering employees as security gaps to educating them to be part of the solution.
How is SOAR Cybersecurity the Answer to Defeating Phishing Attempts?
Enhancing security awareness should be the top priority for organizations that have been a victim or is looking to amp up their security efforts against phishing. That being said, security teams also need to adopt cybersecurity tools that can rapidly investigate and terminate phishing attacks before it can do any real damage to the system. This is where SOAR tools come to the rescue.
New to understanding SOAR Cybersecurity? Here is everything you need to know - What is SOAR? Tips for SOCs to Get Started With SOAR Security
Here are 3 ways the SOAR security platform can make dealing with phishing easier:
In large organizations, there has been a recent increase in employees reporting phishing and forwarding suspicious emails and links to a dedicated inbox. As good as this practice is, the volume of mails to be put under investigation daily is overwhelming for the limited number of security professionals.
The SOAR platform with its automation capabilities can run an automated workflow as and when these emails are received. This gets the initial phishing investigation processes under control and differentiates malicious emails from legitimate ones for the employee, thus saving time and preventing a potential attack without the need for any human intervention.
Investigating a phishing attack is tiresome. Parsing out the different indicators of the attack to flag it as malicious or phishing emails, require time and effort. Moreover, the process needs to be repeated over and over as large organizations are at risk of receiving phishing messages in a very frequent manner.
With the help of an intelligent SOAR platform, enterprises can automate these manual tasks. This is possible because most phishing schemes rely on repetitive techniques that modern SOAR tools can easily pick up, helping it to flag the issue as phishing. SOAR IT security tools can parse out IP addresses, URLs and attachments, all automatic and then enrich the data obtained. With the help of SOAR cybersecurity, the SecOps team can focus on skill-based issue resolution rather than worry about these repetitive processes.
Efficient incident response is the forte of smart SOAR IT security tools. Does your enterprise have a solid response plan in place? Learn here - Testing Your Incident Response Plan
After the initial scans are done and if the threat is known to the SOAR security tool, it can be configured to follow a particular workflow that indicates and triggers a response to do away with the threat. The best SOAR tools can send automated threat reports to the analysts that include information about the scope of the threat to help analysts decide how they want to resolve it.
This is how a SOAR platform brings humans and machines to work together, automating manual workflows and letting the analysts only take care of issues where their skillset is required. If the security analysts determine that the phishing attack needs to be immediately eliminated, then the SOAR cybersecurity platform can be configured to delete the emails and other similar emails across the organization’s network and set up rules to automatically detonate such threats in the future.
The SOAR security landscape is booming with an increasing number of businesses embracing this smart technology to address their security needs. Here is how SOAR is predicted to be of help this year and beyond - Combating Mega Data Breaches With SOAR in 2020
The Anlyz Advantage
Anlyz brings proactive security orchestration and automation to the table with Sporact® - an intelligent SOAR platform for incident response. It guarantees a 360-view of the enterprise’s cybersecurity infrastructure with the help of contextual insights into the threat landscape, thus helping the analysts develop an informed strategy about threat remediation and mitigation methods.
Learn more about Sporact® and get secure with Anlyz - Sporact®: A Case Management Tool for CISOs
Ending Thoughts
According to Propeller, about 14.5 billion spam emails are sent every day. With enterprises hosting a large number of employees that have access to some kind of sensitive information or another, the time has come for the business leadership to take phishing seriously. The looming threat of data breaches and ransomware infections that can hold information hostage, security awareness training has become a must. Along with it, organizations also need to have an effective incident response plan in place that can rapidly track and terminate phishing attacks in the event of their occurrence. With Anlyz’s help, secure your enterprise today.
