Preventing Phishing Scams: Best Practices for Employers [10 Essential Tips]

Phishing scams pose serious risks to businesses of all sizes, as even industry titans can fall victim to these sophisticated attacks. 

The sheer scale of these scams is reflected in the 2024 Egress Email Security Risk Report, which found that 94% of responding organizations were victims of phishing attacks. That same report discovered that 96% of organizations that suffered phishing attacks were negatively impacted. 

Exacerbating the problem is that AI tools are expected to increase the number of phishing scams by automating the creation process for phishing emails and other fraudulent messages. 

AI also makes phishing more difficult for employees to detect, because these tools can help reduce traditional warning signs of fraud, like poorly worded messages.  

It’s critical that brands stay vigilant to avoid phishing attacks. Without taking protective measures to avoid phishing scams, businesses are vulnerable to scams that can cause permanent damage to their brand reputations and fiscal outlooks.

10 Essential Tips to Avoid Phishing Scams

1.  Teach employees how to spot common tactics in phishing emails and other messages

Employee education is key for protecting your business from common phishing scams. Your employees should understand telltale signs of scam emails, such as generic greetings or a claim that there’s a problem with their account or billing information.

Teach your employees to beware of links in emails or messages that prompt them to click to update sensitive information or make a payment. Recently, a major carbon supplier fell victim to an email phishing scam targeting its employees, resulting in the loss of $60 million.

When asked to give out login credentials or financial information via emails, text messages, or on social media, employees should know to act with caution. 

In the recent “Scattered Spider” scam, bad actors targeted employees with alarming text messages. These texts warned that their accounts would be deactivated, attempting to lure unsuspecting employees into providing confidential information. 

2. Establish policies for reporting suspicious emails and messages

Encourage employees to report phishing attempts to your organization. Doing so can help reduce risks and streamline your organization’s processes to secure data and swiftly mitigate potential damage.

You can also ask employees to report phishing attempts in other channels like social media (eg. WhatsApp messages) or via organization-wide communication, such as Slack.

Make reporting phishing attempts an easy process. Consider creating a specific email to which everyone sends this information, so you can keep track of all attempted attacks in one place. For example, the email could be phishing@yourcompanyname.com.

3. Leverage email spam filters to stop phishing emails

If you can prevent phishing emails from reaching your employees’ mailboxes, you can reduce the risk of an employee falling victim to a scam. Most email providers use filters to remove emails that contain indicators of malicious intent.

If these filters aren’t blocking enough malicious emails, you can adjust the settings for higher levels of security. However, complex phishing attacks might be able to go undetected with traditional methods, so you may consider leveraging more advanced anti-phishing solutions

4. Embrace endpoint security solutions

Your employees’ devices, including their mobile phones and laptops, are potential entry points for attackers. In order to safeguard your organization, it’s critical that you secure employee devices. This is especially important when you employ remote workers, who regularly access your company’s sensitive data from their devices. 

5. Conduct regular security audits

It’s important to perform regular checks to determine if your employees will fall for a phishing scam. This could look like sending your own phishing emails, posing as a scammer claiming an employee must turn over sensitive company data. 

These tests can help uncover vulnerabilities and weaknesses within your organizational security. Use audit results to improve employee awareness and training.

6. Deploy monitoring and prevention software

There are many types of solutions to monitor threats and prevent phishing attempts. Consider using a threat intelligence solution that provides a complete digital threat map, giving your brand greater visibility into the risks you’re facing. Leverage AI-powered solutions in order to stay ahead of emerging threats.

7. Regularly update your software

Beyond ensuring that your employees benefit from bug fixes and better user experience, software updates will typically include patches to mitigate vulnerabilities and improve security. 

Browser vulnerabilities are often used during phishing attacks, so it’s particularly important to make sure these are updated.

However, it’s important to ensure that employees don’t fall for web browser phishing attacks by clicking on fake browser update pop-ups.

8. Protect your accounts with multi-factor authentication and strong passwords

A strong password is your first line of defense against cyber threats. Requiring period password updates enhances protection. Adding multi-factor authentication (MFA) creates an extra security layer, by verifying user identities in an additional form, such as a notification to their phones. 

Together, these measures significantly reduce the risk of unauthorized access and help safeguard your sensitive information.

9. Encrypt your data

Encrypting your data ensures only authorized users can access sensitive information. By encrypting, you protect against many kinds of online attacks, including phishing, which often exploit vulnerabilities to steal data. Encryption adds a powerful layer of defense, keeping your business’ sensitive information safe.

10. Raise employee awareness about deepfake phishing scams

It’s extremely important that your employees understand the risk posed by deepfake phishing scams. In these scams, bad actors create convincing-looking videos to trick workers into believing they are actually interacting with your brand’s senior management.

Train employees how to discern potential deepfakes through digital communication channels.

Require employees to take preventative steps before disclosing sensitive company information. 

When financial transactions are required through digital communication channels, employees should respond to calls or video calls by calling back using the channels they are familiar with.

Gain control of threats with BrandShield’s anti-phishing solution 

The most effective way to safeguard your company against phishing attacks is to partner with experts in online brand protection. 

BrandShield provides a complete digital threat map by monitoring the Internet, including social media, to detect phishing sites and pages, impersonation, and online fraud.

With BrandShield, you’ll enjoy round-the-clock, AI-powered dark web monitoring to detect phishing threats to your brand, get detailed reports on monitoring, detection, and enforcement activities, and gain access to a team of IP experts to manage takedowns and enforcement.

Learn more about BrandShield’s anti-phishing solution here. Get in touch with us today to talk about how we can protect your brand from phishing scams and other online threats to your brand.