How to Avoid Phishing Scams with AI A Business Owners Guide

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“Hello sir/ma’am, I’m calling from an xxx bank (bank you have an account in), this is an official call about some unusual activity in your bank account, can you please tell me your bank account number, transaction ID, etc? You gotta be quick, there might be some hackers!” Hold our beer! But wait; we don’t drink, hold my Chai then. The hacker is none other than the same employee calling from your bank. Yes, these are online Phishers and this blog is about how to avoid Phishing Scams.

What Happens in Phishing Scams?

In Phishing Scams, cyber criminals reach out to you as representatives of renowned banks, companies, or forums you are associated with and present a very tricky situation that makes you panic, such as a bank account being hacked or unusual activity in your account. They ask for confidential information to be shared and links to be clicked. 

Do not do that! Clicking on such links or giving away such information can cause your business to face financial and reputational loss, identity theft, operational disruptions, legal consequences, etc.  

Are Phishing and Hacking the Same?

No, Phishing and Hacking are not the same. Yes, the purpose is the same: to gain access to confidential information that leads to some kind of profit for the person doing such activities. 

In Phishing, they manipulate you to share information by making you panic while Hackers are technical people who hack into your systems by manipulating technological weaknesses and steal important data. There are several types of Phishing: 

• Email Phishing: When online Phishers mail you and ask you to click on links or download suspicious files.

• Spear Phishing: Spear Phishing is when scammers attack specific businesses or business personas and present situations that appear to be very similar and true.

• Smishing: When Phishers send you text messages and try to scam you, that’s called Smishing.

• Vishing: Vishing is when they call you and say it’s an emergency, do this immediately, etc. Worst, huh! Hate them. 

So, are both a threat to your business? Yes. But are you more vulnerable to Phishing Scams? Yes, too. 

Why are Businesses Vulnerable to Phishing?

Because they are ignorant or too busy with other stuff. Okay, we’re sorry, didn’t want to be rude but this is very true. See, we completely understand business owners. They have to manage it all even if they have hired professionals for every aspect of the operation. Approvals, deals, sales, marketing, reputation, communication, meetings, oh my god, it’s a never-ending process. Moreover, they need to stop employee fights, unwanted resignations, etc. That’s more hectic. Our CEO also works very hard for his business and sometimes for us employees. Thanks boss, we are blessed (crying in happiness). 

Okay, enough melodrama for today, let’s focus on factors that are making businesses more vulnerable to such Phishers —

Lack of Employee Training: Yes, we employees often end up being the victim of these phishing scams and in the office, we are the villains because technically we clicked on that link and now, it’s a loss. Business owner! Don’t fire your employees or blame them, educate them about how to avoid phishing scams, and best practices, and run frequent tests to see how well they are handling such situations. This is what we do at Stealth Technocrats.

Sophistication of Scams: Sometimes well-trained, well-experienced professionals also fall for the trap. Do you know why? Darling, they are nightmares dressed like a daydream. (another Taylor Swift song, sorry, just popped into our head, hehe). Yeah, so it means that these calls or messages are very hard to recognize, these scammers are so well-spoken or emails so well-written that you will not doubt them as scams or threats. 

Over-Reliance on Traditional Tools: How to avoid phishing scams the best way? With tools that recognize them and block them, right? Yeah, easy. No, it’s not easy at all because the tools are from the Stone Age; absolute garbage. This is high time that Indian businesses need to get premium tools that are capable of handling the modern-age Phishers. They have evolved people, they know it all.

How AI Can Help to Avoid Phishing Scams?

What’s the best way to stop phishing attacks? Use AI; duh! We can’t believe that people still don’t know it, especially business owners. Don’t lie, you know everything about AI marketing tools. Don’t, don’t lie, you know it. Then, how come you forget that AI can help with cybersecurity as well? 

It’s okay, it’s not necessary to know everything. But no my dear, you know everything and now you know what to do with those Phishers. Hehe (evil laugh). Okay, before we jump into tools and other stuff, you need to know how AI blocks Phishers so that you can implement it effectively. 

Real-Time Threat Detection: AI tools can read emails, messages, etc., and detect unusual language, patterns, mismatched domains, and more. What happens next? They get blocked immediately. You don’t even need to see them or initiate anything, it’s in autopilot mode folks!

Behavioral Analysis: Behavior? Does it mean that AI can see them in person? Haha, no. Behavior means user behavior on screen, suspicious clicks, logins, download patterns, etc. Some advanced AI cybersecurity tools can detect such things which means that even if that phishing email somehow manages to pass security filters, the system will flag immediately.

Automated Responses and Mitigation: Automated responses or what we call autopilot mode in our language are the best features of such AI systems. They are pre-programmed to recognize scams, so they see them and block them even before they reach employees’ systems. But this is not the best part, the best part is that AI can learn new patterns, which means even if the Phishers come up with some new scam techniques, AI will still not spare them. Absolute gangsta! Wanna know examples? Microsoft Defender & Google Workspace

Implementing AI for Phishing Protection in Your Business

Now let’s talk about some secrets here, where and how to use AI to avoid phishing attacks. Well, there are some basic practices that you need to do. We are not experts but yeah, here at Stealth Technocrats, this is our ritual. Ugh, don’t wanna remember the times when these Phishers almost got us. Since then, we have been religiously educating ourselves about cyber threats and ways to tackle them efficiently. So, here’s what we do —

Choose the Right Tools: We have spent a lot of money and energy on finding the right anti-phishing tool. You need to make sure that your business uses the best anti-phishing tools in the market.  Why best? Because only the best ones can give you 360-degree protection.

Train Employees on AI Systems: Depending on AI resources is important but that doesn’t mean that we should ignore human resources. If your employees don’t know how to use such tools, there is no point in spending so much buying them. So, initiate training programs, seminars, or meetings and educate them about such tools, and their usage, and also teach them how to recognize phishing scams on their own, what are the types, how the messages look like, etc. This way, they will not only become efficient in using AI tools but will also be self-sufficient in handling scams on their own. 

Monitor and Update AI Systems:

Monitoring and updating those tools are as important as using them. This is what most businesses don't realize. They think buying a tool and forgetting is enough. No my dear, please check on it, read the news, and research once in a while to see whether there have been any updates that you can implement. We do it too, now and then at Stealth; we do a meeting and discuss how we are handling cyber threats now and what changes can we make. You won’t believe what we found out, we got to know that our social media manager had some cool tricks to recognize these phishers, isn’t it amazing? We should also organize such a meeting in your company. Evolving your tools and practices is the only way to keep these phishing scams away forever.

Conclusion

Hmmm, now we realize that we are tired. It was a long blog, right? Sorry, but we had to do this to you to make you understand better. We don’t wanna come up with a blog that says “Are you using AI for cyber security? No? Okay, this is why you should. We mean, brother, people know why, just tell them how to use it.

So yeah, we hope that this blog helped you understand phishers better and take AI’s help better. See you in our next blog that is about…. Loading