7 steps to gear up for an AI-enabled phishing era

The modern digital business landscape has undoubtedly unlocked the doors of opportunities for businesses but has significantly broadened the scope of cyberattacks. And when we talk about the most common cybersecurity threat for modern digital businesses, phishing remains at the top.

While most businesses leverage innovative technologies and tools to prevent their employees and customers from falling prey to phishing scams, most aren’t sure what they need to incorporate into their systems.

Cybercriminals are way ahead of the curve. And they know that tricking people is relatively more straightforward than bypassing robust security measures regarding firewalls and stringent authentication.

Using modern AI-based tools and platforms, these cybercriminals are easily tricking people and stealing their personal or business information. As a result, more businesses and individuals lose sensitive information leading to financial and reputational damages.

1. Know the Threats

No cybersecurity strategy will work if you prepare it without knowing the threats to your business and your current cybersecurity posture.

And one of the biggest challenges that organizations face is that hackers are leveraging machine learning to generate quality and compelling content which seems legitimate.

Receiving emails generated through these ML platforms can’t be easily judged, and users end up clicking on a malicious link since the content in the emails doesn’t have typos or grammatical errors.

Once you know these threats, educating your customers and staff members to look for red flags and reach the security team is better.

2. Educate and Train

As we already discussed, cybercriminals know it's easy to trick people instead of bypassing stringent layers of security.

Regular training sessions regarding the potential threats and prevention could reinforce your internal cybersecurity posture.

You can prevent your business and customers from a data breach by minimizing human error and ensuring your employees and customers are aware of the latest phishing attacks.

Ensure your employees are trained so that they look at every lucrative email suspiciously.

3. Plan to Combat an Attack and Contain it

It’s always a great decision to train for the best and be prepared for the worst. We can’t avoid social engineering attacks or attacks that trick our customers or employees through fraudulent emails.

We can only minimize the number of events where our business information and customer privacy could be compromised. Hence, a good action plan is needed to deal with a situation where an individual falls victim to these phishing emails.

Additionally, adaptive authentication can help minimize the risks since it automatically incorporates another secure layer of authentication whenever an unauthorized professional tries to access an account, significantly when credentials are compromised.

Using adaptive authentication is helpful since it reinforces basic account security. And it works even when multi-factor authentication is also compromised.

4. Phishing Simulations

Running phishing simulations is the best way to know how well your business is prepared against phishing attacks and how it combated.

You can use AI-genera combated tent to target your customers/employees and check whether they can identify red flags.

If you get most people reporting phishing emails, it’s a great thing. Otherwise, you must focus on increasing your frequency of training your employees/customers, so they don’t fall victim to these attacks.

5. Using The Highest Level of Security through AI-Detection Tools

As mentioned, AI-generated content can’t be easily detected in emails, making them feel legitimate; using AI-detection tools in your systems can significantly help.

There are great tools available in the market that you can integrate throughout your business for detecting AI-generated content.

Various tools could also help you filter malicious links and files. These also highlight whether or not the email's sender is a trusted individual/business.

6. Streamline Phishing Reporting Mechanism

AI phishing campaigns are fatal for entire organizations since they’re planned to target as many individuals as possible. And thus, leading to substantial financial losses.

Hence, your business must enhance its phishing reporting mechanism so employees can be quickly informed regarding any suspicious activity or breach. And this can save their personal details and sensitive business information.

A central mechanism to report and alert phishing is undoubtedly the need of the hour for every organization where the chances of a breach are extremely high.

7. Phishing Resistant Authentication Mechanism

As discussed earlier, adaptive authentication could be a game-changer for businesses to reinforce their security posture.

However, specific tools and techniques to safeguard customer identity and adaptive authentication can also help mitigate the risks.

Leveraging a robust identity security mechanism with adaptive authentication will not only help safeguard individuals from phishing attacks but will eventually help improve the overall security posture of your organization.

The Bottom Line

Phishing is one of the most accessible, common, and effective ways to sneak into a business network and cause financial and reputational damage.

And with the advancement of modern AI and ML-based tools, hackers can now attack an organization in a few seconds and exploit their details.

Hence, businesses must understand the importance of robust security mechanisms and employee/customer awareness training to mitigate the risks.