Phishing is a type of cybercrime in which attackers impersonate legitimate organizations to trick victims into revealing sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, account numbers, or financial information. Phishing attacks commonly occur through email, SMS messages (smishing), or voice phishing (vishing) phone calls and often direct victims to a malicious website designed to mimic an official site.
Why phishing attacks remain a major cybersecurity threat
Phishing attacks have grown incredibly sophisticated in recent years. Cybercriminals execute phishing campaigns on an industrial scale, continuously evolving their methods and techniques to fly under the security radar and evade detection. While phishing was once conducted primarily through email, recent attacks use text messages (also known as smishing), social media, voice phishing (vishing) conducted over a phone call, and other vectors to dupe victims into revealing login credentials, account numbers, financial information, sharing credit card numbers, other personal data or downloading malware.
Today, email phishing messages frequently impersonate trusted brands and institutions like Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, PayPal, Gmail, or even government and law enforcement agencies, directing victims to a phishing website that mimics an official website. These fraudulent messages are often suspicious emails that contain malicious attachments or deceptive links that rely on spoofing tactics to make a fake domain name look legitimate.
Because phishing seeks to take advantage of a user’s willingness to trust messages from what appear to be legitimate sources, security awareness training is a big part of defending against phishing campaigns. However, this approach isn’t a silver bullet. Cybercriminals and their campaigns continue to become more refined, adapting their techniques to overcome basic security awareness training methods and bypass spam filters and traditional email security tools. The best defense against phishing attacks uses multiple layers of anti-phishing protection. That’s why more organizations today choose IT security solutions from Akamai to protect users, data, and systems from the threat of phishing and spearphishing campaigns.
How phishing attacks work
Phishing campaigns rely on two factors. The first is a lure – something that gets the victim’s attention. This may be a warning or an alarming message with a sense of urgency that causes the victim to act quickly – often without thinking about potential consequences. The second factor is the landing, which might be a malicious link or attachment, a fake website, or a form that requests sensitive data such as login credentials or credit card information.
These attackers, typically known as phishers, frequently use spoofing techniques, deceptive redirects, and lookalike domain names to make a phishing message appear legitimate. In many cases, the link in a phishing email leads to a fake webpage that closely mirrors an official site, making it difficult for users to distinguish a legitimate login page from a phishing attempt.
In a standard phishing campaign, attackers send out thousands of phishing messages to potential victims, posing as a legitimate or trusted company and seeking to pressure victims into taking action. In a spearphishing attack, scammers target a specific individual or group, using social engineering and personal details collected from open source intelligence, social networks, websites, and other information in the public domain to convince the target that the sender is legitimate.
Other types of phishing attacks include:
- Smishing (phishing via SMS text messages)
- Vishing or voice phishing (fraudulent requests delivered via phone call)
- Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks targeting finance teams and executives
- Credential harvesting campaigns designed to facilitate identity theft.
The results of a successful phishing campaign can be devastating. Phishing attacks can deploy malware to hijack computers as part of a botnet to be used for denial-of-service attacks. In more advanced cases, these attacks may deliver ransomware or steal credentials that provide access to high-value systems. Some phishing campaigns convince users to transfer money to fraudulent bank accounts, while other attacks are designed to steal credentials that provide access to high-value, sensitive information or intellectual property.
How Akamai helps prevent phishing attacks
To combat phishing and other cyber attacks, Akamai deploys edge security solutions on a global platform that extends from applications and infrastructure to the user. Situated between potential attackers and your IT ecosystem, our security technology stops attacks in the cloud, at the network edge – before they can jeopardize your applications and infrastructure.
In recent years, our security portfolio has grown from a collection of innovative point solutions into a comprehensive platform with the breadth and depth to protect our customers from the most dangerous threats. Akamai cybersecurity technology surrounds and protects your entire ecosystem – from clouds and users to apps and APIs – providing intelligent, end-to-end protection to defend against a wide range of multi-vector threats.
Akamai stops phishing attacks with solutions that provide:
- Unparalleled scale. The unmatched scale and global distribution of our Akamai Intelligent Edge platform enables us to stop the largest direct attacks while insulating you from collateral damage of attacks on other customers.
- Real-time support. We offer a single point of contact for support and real-time incident response.
- Global protection. Defend against attacks on your applications, data centers, public cloud, and multi-cloud environments anywhere in the world.
- Greater visibility. Manage your security programs and multiple security solutions through our web-based portal that delivers greater visibility into attacks and policy control. From high-level dashboards, drill down into different individual areas of concern, integrating existing security information and event management (SIEM) tools to deliver greater awareness across all solutions.
- Unified security. Managed from a single pane of glass, our security solutions are designed to work seamlessly together to improve mitigation and simplify management.
- Ease of use. Our Managed Security Services eliminate the need for your teams to deploy physical appliances or software solutions. Our adaptive threat protections keep pace with a quickly evolving threat landscape. And by integrating your application development lifecycle with our management APIs, you can automate changes to your Akamai solution configurations.
- Future-proof solutions. With Akamai security solutions, you can build an infrastructure to respond to future threats, seamlessly deploying new capabilities and solutions as they become available.
Akamai anti-phishing security technologies
Secure web gateway technology
Akamai Secure Internet Access safely connects users and devices to the Internet while proactively protecting against the zero-day malware and phishing attacks. This Akamai solution offers a multilayered defense that includes multiple static and dynamic detection engines along with threat intelligence developed on the world’s largest edge platform. Secure Internet Access can enforce acceptable use policies, identify and block unsanctioned applications, and enhance data loss prevention.
Web application and API protection
Akamai App & API Protector offers one-stop, zero-compromise security for websites, applications, and APIs. With this Akamai technology, you can tailor your defenses by dynamically adapting protections to evolving attacks, including those targeting the OWASP Top 10. Self-tuning capabilities and managed updates simplify security and minimize the effort required from security teams. Advanced API discovery mitigates risk from new or previously unknown APIs while monitoring for malicious payloads.
Microsegmentation
Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is the fastest way to visualize and segment assets in the data center, cloud, or hybrid cloud infrastructure. This software-based segmentation technology prevents lateral movement attacks with a simple, scalable platform featuring real-time threat detection and response capabilities. Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is a fast and simple way to enforce Zero Trust principles inside a hybrid cloud infrastructure.
Multifactor authentication
Akamai MFA prevents employee account takeovers and data breaches with phish-proof multifactor authentication. Using the familiar and frictionless experience of a mobile push to a smart phone – rather than clunky physical security keys – Akamai MFA stops bypass attacks with the most secure standard for multifactor authentication. Self-service enrollment simplifies adoption while end-to-end cryptography and a sealed challenge/response flow make this solution unphishable and confidential.
Scalable secure remote access
Akamai Enterprise Application Access enables your workforce to connect to your IT ecosystem with Zero Trust Network Access. Using an identity-aware proxy in the cloud, this flexible and adaptable service provides granular decision-making access based on real-time signals such as threat intelligence, user information, and device posture.
Frequently Asked Questions
Phishing scams are best prevented with a multilayered security strategy that includes advanced email security, DNS-layer protection, multifactor authentication, spam filtering, and employee awareness training. Organizations should also encourage users to report phishing attempts quickly so security teams can block malicious domains and prevent further compromise.
There are several types of phishing attacks, including email phishing, smishing (SMS phishing), vishing (voice phishing), spear phishing, and Business Email Compromise (BEC). Each type uses social engineering techniques to trick victims into revealing sensitive information or transferring money.
Spear phishing is a targeted form of phishing in which attackers customize email messages to a specific individual or organization. Unlike broad phishing campaigns, spear phishing uses personal details and social engineering tactics to increase credibility and improve the chances of a successful attack.
Business Email Compromise (BEC) is a phishing attack in which cybercriminals impersonate executives, vendors, or trusted partners to trick employees into transferring funds or sharing confidential financial information. BEC attacks often target finance departments and can result in significant financial losses.
Clicking a phishing link may redirect you to a fake website that steals login credentials or installs malware such as ransomware. In some cases, attackers may capture personal data or financial information entered into fraudulent forms.
If you suspect a phishing attempt, do not click any links or download attachments. Report the message to your organization’s IT or security team immediately. Many email providers such as Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, and others also offer built-in “Report phishing” features that help block malicious senders and domains. In the case of a vishing or smishing attack, report the unknown phone number and do not provide any personal information.
Why customers choose Akamai
Akamai is the cybersecurity and cloud computing company that powers and protects business online. Our market-leading security solutions, superior threat intelligence, and global operations team provide defense in depth to safeguard enterprise data and applications everywhere. Akamai’s full-stack cloud computing solutions deliver performance and affordability on the world’s most distributed platform. Global enterprises trust Akamai to provide the industry-leading reliability, scale, and expertise they need to grow their business with confidence.
