Link Click Protection Prevents Spear Phishing Attacks
Quick Answer
Spear phishing targets a specific employee with a message crafted to look like it came from a trusted source, often to extract credentials or trigger a malicious link click or weaponized attachment. The two delivery methods are malicious URLs and weaponized attachments, both of which Link Click Protection handles by re-scanning every URL on click against multiple reputation databases (not just at delivery) and quarantining suspicious attachments until proven safe. Re-scanning on each click matters because a domain that was safe at delivery can be weaponized hours later. Safe sites open normally, so legitimate work flow is not interrupted. The web-based console manages policy, reporting, and threat analysis across the organization without requiring on-prem hardware.
Spear phishing is an exceptionally difficult form of exploit to defend against. In a spear phishing attack, an employee is duped into sharing credentials or other confidential information by representing the email as being from a trusted source. They may be tricked into clicking on a malicious link, opening a weaponized attachment, or visiting a dangerous web site.
Most attempts to hack into corporations and steal confidential information begin with a phishing or spear phishing attack. The damage from such attacks can be overwhelming: millions of dollars can be lost due to disruption in workflow. Often, damaged corporate reputations must be repaired, and customer confidence must be regained in the wake of such an attack.
DuoCircle’s Link Click Protection is only one part of our Advanced Threat Defense Suite, providing your organization with the business-critical protection against spear phishing attacks that it requires, along with email protection service from other threats in the wild today, including viruses, malware, and data loss. With Advanced Threat Defense, your organization will have up-to-date total protection against these threats, while vastly reducing the cost and complexity of implementation compared to a traditional on-site solution.
Mitigating a Spear Phishing Attack Requires Advanced Threat Defense
DuoCircle’s Advanced Threat Defense Suite contains Link Click Protection, which provides protection against both malicious links and weaponized attachments. These are the two most common forms of spear phishing attack.
Link Click Protection scans each URL clicked against multiple URL reputation databases for the most up-to-date protection possible. This scan is conducted at every click before the site is opened in the user’s browser. If the link is suspicious, the user is warned to that effect and the site is blocked. Safe sites are opened normally, of course, to assure that no interruption to legitimate business occurs. Just because a site is safe the first time it is scanned doesn’t guarantee that it will be safe on subsequent clicks, so every site is scanned every time a link to it is clicked. Wholesale protection of this kind is the key to providing a much higher degree of e-mail security than trying to identify particular attackers or individual phishing “signatures.”
The Benefits of Real-Time Spear Phishing Protection
With DuoCircle’s Link Click Protection, your organization will:
- Mitigate against the risk of phishing attacks, spear phishing threats, and whale phishing vulnerabilities without requiring any additional outlay of IT infrastructure or overhead moneys.
- Instantly and seamlessly protect users against attacks on any device anywhere, without any interruption of service.
- Control the mail security service easily through a single unified web-based console as a part of DuoCircle’s Advanced Threat Defense Suite.
- Apply end-to-end real time threat analysis and reporting at a granular level to improve insight.
General Manager
General Manager at DuoCircle. Product strategy and commercial lead across the email security portfolio.
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