How to Spot a Phishing Email

Phishing has long been one of the most common cyber threats that organizations face. Phishing attacks can be used to steal sensitive data and are commonly used as a first stage in other attacks. By delivering malware to a target system or stealing login credentials, phishing gives an attacker the access that they need to carry out their goals.

Over the years, phishing attacks have grown more sophisticated, an evolution that has accelerated with the introduction of Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT. As phishing attacks grow more automated and more realistic, it is more important than ever that employees know how to identify and properly respond to a potential phishing attack.

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8 Ways to Spot Phishing Emails

Phishing attacks pose a significant threat to personal and professional cybersecurity. Some warning signs of phishing attacks include the following:

Incorrect Sender Address: Phishers commonly use lookalike addresses to perform their attacks. If an email address doesn’t look right, it’s probably phishing.
Demand for Urgent Action: Phishing messages commonly demand some urgent action, such as logging into an account to fix an issue. The goal of this demand is to trick the recipient into acting before they have time to think about whether the email is legitimate.
Grammatical and Spelling Errors: Grammatical and spelling errors are a common warning sign of phishing emails. However, the rise of Generative AI makes these telltale signs less common, as AI can write grammatically correct phishing emails.
Misspelled Domain Names: Phishing emails are often designed to trick the recipient into clicking on a malicious link. These links may use lookalike domains — a practice called typosquatting — to make a link look legitimate when it actually points to a malicious website.
Requests for Sensitive Data: Phishing attacks are commonly intended to steal login credentials, payment information, or other sensitive data. If an email asks for this type of information, it has a higher probability of being a phishing attack.
Unusual Attachment Types: Phishing emails commonly include attachments whose file types don’t make sense. For example, a resume that is a ZIP file rather than a PDF or DOCX is likely to be a malicious archive file containing malware.
Too Good to Be True Emails: In addition to deception, phishers frequently use greed to trick the recipient into falling for the phishing attack. If an email seems too good to be true, then it probably is.
Unfamiliar Greeting or Salutation: Along with grammatical issues, phishing emails may also include unusual greetings or salutations. For example, professional emails may include overly familiar greetings or salutations, or an email may use an overly-general greeting such as “Dear Customer”.

Phishing Protection Best Practices

A successful phishing attack can result in a malware infection or the loss of sensitive personal or corporate data. Some best practices that organizations can implement to prevent a successful phishing attack include the following:

User Training: Phishing attacks target the user, trying to trick them into clicking on a link or opening malicious attachments. Training users to identify the warning signs of phishing attacks reduces the phishing risk to the organization.
Email Security: Email security solutions can identify and block phishing emails before they reach a user’s inbox. This helps to prevent employees from falling for the phish and clicking the link or opening the malicious attachment.
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): User credentials are a common target of phishing attacks. Implementing MFA helps to reduce this risk by making it more difficult for an attacker to use compromised credentials to gain access to a user’s account.
Data Loss Prevention (DLP): Phishing emails may also be intended to steal sensitive information from the organization. DLP solutions can identify and block sensitive information from being sent to unauthorized recipients.
Endpoint Security: Many phishing emails are designed to deliver malware to the user’s device. Endpoint security solutions — such as an antivirus or an endpoint protection platform (EPP) — can help to block, detect, or remediate these malware infections.
Regular Updates: Phishing emails and the malware they carry may be designed to exploit vulnerabilities in an organization’s systems. Regularly applying patches and updates helps to close these security gaps before they can be exploited by an attacker.

Phishing Protection with Check Point

Employee training can help to reduce an organization’s phishing risk, but additional training and employee vigilance only go so far. As phishing attacks become more sophisticated, they have a higher probability of fooling their intended targets.

The best defense against phishing is an anti-phishing solution capable of identifying and blocking phishing emails before they reach the intended recipient’s inbox. Check Point Harmony Email and Office offers robust protection against a range of phishing attacks. In fact, Check Point has been named a Leader in the 2023 Forrester Wave for Enterprise Email Security.