Best Practices for Protecting Your Small or Medium Size Business from Best Practices for Protecting Your Small or Medium | Page 8

Continuous link checking
Real time or near real time link checking is essential to combating phishing attacks. The link can’t
just be checked for emails upon arrival. It must also be checked after the email arrives, when the
link is actually clicked. Every time it’s clicked.
One of the more sophisticated techniques of ransomware, Cryptolocker, is a scheme in which the
attackers send an email from a domain or a URL with a good reputation. When the emails are
delivered the site is clean, but within a few hours the hackers switch out the safe content on the
site for their harmful payload.
The only way to defend against these time-delayed activation techniques is to automatically check
every clicked link in every email against multiple URL reputation databases, every time the link is clicked.
Post-delivery protection is essential. Your emails must be protected from harmful clicks
in real time.
Notifications should also be in real time
Link checking isn’t the only thing that should
happen in real time. Users should get instant
feedback in the form of an alert when a
suspicious link is about to be visited. Each time
a user clicks on a suspicious link, the user and
the system administrator should be alerted to
the malicious link immediately.
By providing instant feedback to users about
the threats associated with such links, not only
are employees protected, but they gain a higher
level of awareness. Real time alerts provide a
learning reinforcement opportunity to improve
their ability to assess the risks of such email
threats in the future.
30% of phishing messages get opened by targeted users

- Verizon
Best Practices for Protecting Your Small or Medium
Size Business from Phishing
8