What is phishing?
A phishing attack begins with an email sent into your organization, disguised to appear as official communication from a well known bank or other financial institution. Usually on the surface, the phishing email will appear quite legitimate. It will often even contain the bank's logos and service marks. It will contain clickable links that appear to be to their legitimate servers (but in fact, will re-direct the unsuspecting victim to a remote server - often overseas).
The phishing scam email will typically feign a technical or bureaucratic reason why you must provide or verify your confidential account information. There will often be a claim of false urgency, that if they fail to provide this information within a short amount of time, their bank account will be suspended or closed or will be liable for substantial penalties.
Education alone is not enough to protect against phishing?
Phishing attacks penetrate the organization and reach their victims through email. Education, to help employees identify phishing emails, is certainly desirable. However, education alone can not possibly protect the organization from the progressively clever and sophisticated masquerades of the professional criminals, who launch these widespread phishing conspiracies.
The technology which will stop the phishing attacks.
An anti phishing aware server spam filter, which scans all inbound internet email for signs of phishing, is the single most effective solution to this epidemic problem. With dependable perimeter anti-phishing security, the dangerous emails will be stopped before ever reaching their target.
Extensible Messaging Platform ( EMP 6 ), will stop phishing attacks as well as spam and email borne viruses before they reach your organization's employees.