No other cyberthreat plagues the world like phishing attacks. This email-borne threat action tops the list as the most used initial attack vector in data breaches today.

Based on advanced social engineering techniques, these email attacks seek to deceive recipients into engaging with malicious content, commit fraud, or perform desired business actions based on the scam at hand.Phishing attacks can have a significant impact on organizations, with the most common including:

• loss of data
• credential compromise
• ransomware infection
• other types of malware infections
• financial loss

Lots of security solutions aim to stop phishing attacks before they reach the inbox, but because of the efforts by cybercriminals to evolve their tactics, it should be assumed that some percentage will always get through.

What’s needed is a concentrated effort in trying to strengthen the weakest link in your security strategy:  the human factor. And, should your users fail the organization (spoiler alert: they do), it’s important for security teams to have an ability to detect phishing attacks themselves.

This paper takes a deep-dive into the makeup of phishing attacks, looks at what aspects of email users need to focus on to elevate their security vigilance, and discusses how you can monitor some of those same characteristics to detect phishing emails — even when security solutions designed to do so don’t.