Phishing protection is a feature to protect users against phishing attacks that aim at stealing their sensitive informations. Phishing is a commonly used technique used by cybercriminals. It is a type of social engineering attack that tricks users into clicking on a malicious link leading to an infected webpage where users are infected with a malware or their sensitive information gets stolen. An ideal phishing protection software prevents users from landing on the infected pages even if they click on the malicious link.
Anti-phishing is a security measure that is designed to protect individuals and enterprises from phishing attacks by cybercriminals .Anti-phishing helps in identifying and blocking phishing websites, emails, and other malicious content, and also helps in protecting the users from becoming victims of phishing scams
Anti-phishing software is a tool that organizations can use to ensure that their employees don't fall prey to phishing attacks. Phishing is a cybercrime where users are lured into clicking malicious links to steal sensitive data such as Personally Identifiable Information (PII), banking and credit card details, and passwords. Phishing is also a popular method for cyber criminals to deliver malware by tricking victims to visit a link that can secretly install the malicious payload distributing trojan malware or ransomware, or execute javascript files from the infected website.. With more and more organizations being affected by phishing attacks, IT admins need to ensure that their users are protected against phishing attacks with a solid anti-phishing software.
An anti-phishing software helps IT admins ensure that users don't fall prey to phishing attacks. This can be achieved in two ways. IT admins can either mandate a lockdown on web, making sure that users can access only the trusted websites. Otherwise they can ensure that malicious websites are detected and blocked.
Since most of these phishing attacks are designed to redirect users to an infected webpage, the attacks are propagated through the browser. To battle against these attacks most browser vendors provide their own anti-phishing mechanism in the form of configurations that users can simply enable on their browsers.
Safe Browsing offered by Google Chrome is one such configuration that prevents users from landing on malicious websites. Google’s Safe Browsing technology examines billions of URLs per day looking for unsafe websites. Thousands of new unsafe sites, many of them legitimate, but compromised are detected every day. These unsafe websites include both: websites containing malware and websites that trick users into disclosing sensitive information.
The configuration once enabled, helps protect devices by showing warnings to users when they attempt to navigate to dangerous sites or download dangerous software designed to take over users' computers. Safe Browsing protects users from web-based threats like malware, unwanted software, and social engineering.
Microsoft Defender SmartScreen, much similar to safe browsing, warns users when they attempt to visit phishing sites or websites infected by malware. If this configuration is enabled on users' browsers, it analyses the webpages that users visit and throws a warning to the user if the page is found to be suspicious. SmartScreen also checks the websites visited by users against a dynamic list of reported phishing sites and malicious software sites. If a match is found, access to the website will be blocked.
SmartScreen also checks files downloaded by the user from the web against a list of reported malicious software sites and programs known to be unsafe. If it finds a match, SmartScreen warns the user that the download has been blocked for their safety.
Firefox's Phishing and Malware Protection warns users when they visit a webpage reported as a deceptive site and as a source of unwanted software (malware), designed to harm users computer. Phishing and Malware Protection works by checking the sites that users visit against lists of reported phishing, unwanted software and malware sites. These lists are automatically downloaded and updated every 30 minutes or so when the Phishing and Malware Protection feature is enabled. When users download application files, Firefox checks the website hosting them against a list of websites known to contain malware. If the site is found on that list, Firefox blocks the file immediately. It also uses Google’s Safe Browsing to verify if the downloaded software is safe before allowing access.
With many business applications shifting to the cloud, browsers are becoming the tool employees use most to access their work. So it should come as no surprise that hackers are following along in this trend with attempts to exploit organizations through browsers. Phishing is the most common cybercrime. This makes phishing protection a necessary layer of protection that IT admins need to incorporate to ensure users' security.