As scammers are cleverly aiming to manipulate businesses and employees into handing over sensitive data, smishing, phishing, and vishing attacks are expanding into new channels and growing even more sophisticated. What are these attacks, who is the target, what is the end goal? Organizations find themselves regularly asking these questions relating to how they can protect their business.
Below is a breakdown of what each attack is and how you can protect your business from the many manipulation techniques of cyberthieves.
What is Phishing?
Phishing comes in many different forms. The form that our team at Fonify is most interested in protecting our clients from is “call phishing.” Call phishing is a common threat to many businesses. Phishers may pretend to be a tax agency, bank, credit card agency or another legitimate group to encourage you to provide sensitive information.
Smishing and vishing are both types of phishing attacks that try to lure businesses and employees via SMS text message and voice calls. Both rely on the same urgent action as phishing scams; the difference is the delivery method.
What is a Smishing?
Smishing (SMS phishing) is a type of phishing attack conducted using SMS (Short Message Services) on cell phones. Just like email phishing scams, smishing messages typically include a threat or enticement to click a link or call a number and hand over sensitive information. Sometimes they might suggest you install some security software, which turns out to be malware.
While smishing attacks are likely to be the least of concerns for a facility, it’s important to educate employees on potential dangers. Many of the phones offered at Fonify include connectivity features such as a Bluetooth USB Dongle and a Wi-Fi USB Dongle. With these advanced features, scammers are finding new ways to hack businesses and employees on a daily basis.
What is Vishing?
Vishing (voice phishing) is a type of phishing attack that is conducted by phone, and in most cases, targets users of Voice over IP (VoIP) services like Skype. This technique is similar to email spoofing, in which e-mail addresses are disguised as if they are from a trusted source.
It’s easy to for a hacker to appear to be calling from a local area code or even from an organization you know. If you don’t pick up, then they’ll leave a voicemail message asking you to call back. Sometimes these kinds of scams will employ an answering service or even a call center that’s unaware of the crime being perpetrated.
The goal is to obtain sensitive information such as credit card details, birthdates, account sign-ins, and sometimes they just want to harvest phone numbers from your contacts. If you respond and call back, there may be an automated message prompting you give data and many people follow along.
Protect Your Business Against VoIP Threats
Being prepared is the strongest defense against phishing, smishing, and vishing attacks. Educating your employees and having them know what to look for will also help keep scammers and hackers from targeting your business. Secondly, we offer phone systems for businesses that include various features, including ones that allow you to activate filters to block callers from suspicious numbers and use call recording to make a copy of conversations with possible scammers.
Contact us for more information on our VoIP phone systems and to see how we can help your business cut costs.
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