Email Security Blog

Prevent Phishing Emails, Scams, and Attacks

Phishing Attacks Are Pervasive

Email fraud, phishing, and email security compromises cost billions of dollars a year for corporations and individuals globally. Despite the increased deployment of anti-phishing software, like phishing simulators and more advanced spam and Malware filters, Phishing attacks remain pervasive.

It Goes Back to the Birth of Email

Despite all this tech at their disposal, current email security measures are still failing badly. Part of the problem lies in the genesis of email as a communications medium and the legacy software tools that were intended to protect it.

When email was invented back in 1971, internet security wasn’t even a consideration.  The basic building blocks of email have remained fairly static since its inception.  While other areas of technology have advanced leaps and bounds, email has essentially toddled a few feet. Despite its relative age, the use of email grows annually, there are billions of active email accounts, and the modern workplace is wholly reliant on it.  There are pretender technologies certainly, but email remains the fastest most efficient way to share thoughts ideas and information.

The tech that has grown up to support email security is similarly aged, and most spam filters available today rely on Bayesian statistical models that seek out common spam email terms and message structure. Properly configured, they can prevent a great deal of junk from arriving in your inbox.

Phishing Attacks Today Are More Sophisticated

Contemporary Phishing attacks and scams, however, do not exhibit the tired mass spam content of yesteryear. Today’s email scams are targeted, deliberate, and in many cases crafted to look, feel and read like a legitimate communication.

Even the giants Facebook and Google, were, until recently, writing checks to a trusted and known vendor. What they realized later was that they had both been phished and while everything about the phishing email that started the scam rolling had the appearance of legitimacy, their respective finance departments were transferring hundreds of thousands of dollars into a fraudsters bank account.

The fact that two tech titans can be fooled should be setting off alarm bells around the industry.  Both had extensive spam and malware filtering in place and training programs to drive phishing awareness for their employees- none of it worked.

Anti-Phishing Software Is Essential

To prevent email fraud, scams and successful phishing attacks, we must adapt our approach to anti-phishing software to meet the challenge. At INKY that is exactly what we have done. Our Phish Fence technology can be deployed across your email domains in typically less than an hour; its small footprint belies its awesome power. Our engineers have taken three elements - computer vision, machine learning, and artificial intelligence and blended them to create a true first in class email fraud prevention solution.

Computer Vision allows INKY to see and seek out suspect images and iconography.  We can detect a forged corporate logo vs. the real thing; machine learning allows INKY to grow our phishing intelligence with every email processed. Our platform is in a perpetual state of learning. Finally, artificial intelligence goes beyond the statistical algorithms and provides a level of analysis that is unmatched in the industry – better yet, all of that is just what goes on behind the scenes.

INKY’s user experience is immersive and unmatched. Each email that a user receives is accompanied by a subtle color-coded banner or phishing email notification, that either confirms a message’s legitimacy or provides a direct and detailed warning to the user that an email is fraudulent. Should the IT department wish, red banner emails can be redirected to a quarantine holding pen. Should a user decide to take action on a red banner email, INKY will provide a further phishing email notification and hopefully prevent the user from acting at all. Our ‘inline’ banners are infinitely more powerful than phishing simulation, every email becomes a teachable moment, and INKY’s banner system helps condition users to be able to identify the real message from the dangerous scam. Further, our user experience is harmonized across platforms, banners present the same way regardless of whether the message is opened on a mobile or a desktop device and the ability to report an email is also always available.

So you want to prevent email fraud, phishing attacks, and scams? That solution is an hour away from being installed, and that solution is INKY’s Phish Fence. Sign up for your complimentary Email Security Analysis.

INKY – Phight Phish

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