As a business owner, chances are you and your employees are connected via the internet to perform daily operations. Without the world wide web, you probably couldn’t get much done in your day-to-day. Although the internet is a powerful tool for efficiency and communication, it also poses risks to your security. Email is the primary target that hackers use to get access to a company’s private data, and email attacks like spear-phishing are on the rise. As a matter of fact, 76% of businesses have reported being a victim of phishing attacks.
Spear phishing is very much like phishing; both include scams to trick the recipient into providing confidential information, such as account credentials, to the attacker. The difference with spear phishing is that these attacks are more targeted, posing a bigger danger because they are better disguised as legitimate emails. A spear-phishing attempt is informed and calculated, featuring common identifiers such as:
- Recipient’s area of expertise
- Role in an organization
- Interests
- Public residential and tax information
- Public social media information
- Name
This information is usually public and allows the hacker to easily find it online to craft their attack. Because of growing threats to cybersecurity such as spear phishing, it is essential to stay up-to-date on programs and solutions to prevent and identify spear phishing scams. This is especially true to business owners managing large amounts of data in the online space daily on top of several employees.
In this article, we’re counting down the top 5 spear phishing prevention software to help keep you and your company protected. Install one of these programs for a piece of mind, knowing your data is protected. Let’s get started!
1 Proofpoint Essentials
Proofpoint leads the market as an email security gateway and is the world’s largest email security vendor. Proofpoint Essentials is the company’s cost-effective solution targeted at small and medium-sized businesses. One major selling point about Proofpoint is that the solution conducts all of its own research and collects data instead of relying on third parties. Here’s where they draw their data from:
- More than 100 billion data points a day
- 100 million email boxes
- 200 million social-media accounts
- 7 million mobile apps
2 Mimecast Secure Email Gateway
Mimecast is a great choice for larger companies looking to have granular control over the program features. It is highly customizable with a range of offerings including:
- Impersonation Protection to help prevent phishing attacks
- Attachment and URL protection
- Real-time protection that stops any phishing attempts before they even happen
Mimecast is a leading vendor regarding threat research. They monitor billions of emails, and they possess a large threat database, which means the software is always on top of the latest threats and how to protect you and your organization from them.
3 Barracuda Essentials
Barracuda is a cost-effective internet protection solution for businesses, offering virus scanning and spam protection in real-time. It is ideal for smaller companies looking to move their business to the cloud. Some features of Barracuda Essentials include:
- Advanced protection with URL scanning and outbound email filtering.
- Threat intelligence
- Other services bundled with its email security: archiving solutions, encryption, and backup.
In addition, Barracuda Essentials is known among consumers for its superb customer service. Many users report their team is quick to respond and knowledgeable.
4 Ironscales
Ironscales offers quick, effective protection against threats within the email inbox. The program comprises six modules sold as one complete email security service, with a single admin console to manage. Ironscales is completely cloud-based, making it highly compatible with Office 365 and G Suite. One of the most noteworthy things about Ironscales is that it uses AI-driven security tools to identify malicious emails and erase them from users’ inboxes automatically. This means that users may not even know they had a phishing scam in their inbox because Ironscales took care of it. Other features include:
- “Report Phish” button: Located directly in user emails, works on all devices, and is fully customizable.
- Security awareness training and phishing simulation, along with customizable phishing templates, plus training materials.
Overall, the program is great for organizations that are happy with their level of spam filtering but demand additional protection from advanced email threats, such as spear phishing.
5 Cisco Cloud Email Security
Leading internet security company Cisco has created a strong email secure gateway which offers a powerful defense against business phishing attacks. Cisco Cloud Email Security automatically blocks links it deems to be unsafe, which protects you from emails even when they look genuine. The platform also offers a range of customizable admin features so that you can tailor the program to meet your business needs specifically. Other notable features of Cisco Cloud Email Security include:
- Spam filtering
- Data loss protection: Ensures your emails are protected with encryption
- Easy integration into other security services
- Strong multi-level protection
Cisco Cloud Email Security is ideal for larger corporations that can take advantage of all it has to offer.
