Phishing attacks are scarily easy to build

Targeting people, not the infrastructure

Historically, many cyberattacks tended to be technology-focused and required specialized knowledge to expertly fool a network into believing the attacker was an authorized user. Spoofing, man-in-the-middle (LAN or Wi-Fi), DNS, and other attacks require actual skill (and a bit of malice) to properly execute.

Phishing attacks are a different breed of threat, however, because they are focused on targeting the people of an organization versus attacking the infrastructure.

Launching a phishing attack Is scarily easy

Phishing attacks do not have to be complicated. Merely send a link by email, get the user to click on the link, and create a web page that looks real enough to trick the user into entering their credentials. [Read our Phishing eBook]

With that method, a bad actor can pick up ready-made software, pull together a target email list, and start a phishing campaign in a few minutes—no network certification required. The rapid speed of attack creation enables cybercriminals to launch thousands of credential-stealing websites every day.

Once an attacker is inside the network, they can move laterally across the organization to probe for weak points and troves of valuable information.

Phishing through the eyes of a hacker

While the tactic is highly effective against legacy cybersecurity gateways, cloud-based isolation provides a space (away from your organization’s network) where the phishing threat can be contained by limiting the ability of end-users to input their credentials into suspicious websites.

To explore phishing threats, our security team created a video to demonstrate this attack method’s ease of implementation. Watch the video above to learn how Menlo Security helps to safeguard your network with cloud-based isolation.

To learn more about email phishing, download our eBook: Protecting Against Email Threats.