Phishing attacks on SMEs have increased recently as most of them do not have potential IT division and the technology to tackle the cybercrimes. Bogus emails messages for profitable business deals, tax return values, bank account and credit cards details, and private data are phishing tactics that incur to huge loss for these organizations.

The top five industries that are vulnerable to cybercrimes inclusive of phishing attacks are financial services, travel, government services, education, and IT services. Companies having access to Internet nurture a false sense of security, assuming that uploading antivirus software and an IT team are sufficient to secure the important data related to both company and its customers. But as one can see that even the IT industries are enlisted among the Phish-prone industries.

There are a vast number of companies that regularly receive phishing emails that are accessed to their employees. Individuals clicking on these links are directed to land on page that asks for important username, passwords, and other related details. Within these companies, one or more individuals always click on the links leading to Internet security breaches. Precaution to phishing attacks is the much needed exposure to cybercrimes and the sophisticated tactics applied by the cybercriminals.

Employees should get maximum exposure to cybercrime and training to neglect phishing emails and other bogus schemes. With rapid advancement in technology, cybercriminals have become highly sophisticated in their ways targeting businesses through legitimate/ official-looking mails as if sent by the business partners, company executives, or government agencies. SMEs are mostly tricked by real-looking emails believing that these have been sent by someone known. Just a click can upload the malware on the system bypassing IT firewalls and antivirus software.

Small and Medium Enterprises should combat the growing security threats with awareness and advance web security solutions. There are effective strategies that help countering the cyber-attacks and explore the possibilities to upgrade the system to an extent that can reassure data security. Cyber Security Awareness Training is vital in this section as human element is majorly involved just as the technical.

Awareness alone is not enough. Although, emails can be filtered out but not web browsing tools. An SME organization requires potential user identity and other security policies which can tackle the security risk to an extent. With this technology, an organization can enforce polices to all its employees with much lesser effort. Also, there are various anti-phishing and anti-spam software are available which can help counter the problem of phishing scams.

Part and parcel of tech-solution for phishing scams is content filtering. This allows selecting the web content by location or file type. Cybercriminals often choose a certain type of file and web content that can be easily grasped and blocked. Regular monitoring and auditing also helps to solve the problem from the end-users perspective.