4 Tips to Keep Your Business and Customers Safe from Phishing

With the holiday shopping season in high gear, your email campaigns are already doing their job to boost Q4 sales. But while you focus on that, your business domain may be at risk. If it’s spoofed, instead of seasonal discounts, your customers may get phishing emails sent on your behalf.

How to Protect Your Customers from Phishing Scams

In email phishing, spoofing is a common tactic. It involves faking a sender’s address to make it look like it’s coming from a trusted source. In reality, it tricks people into clicking malicious links, sharing sensitive information, and downloading attachments. 

These scams cause devastating damage: Americans lost $10 billion to fraud last year, the Federal Trade Commission reported. Impostor schemes and shopping fraud were the most common, and email is the primary channel these scams are being carried out. 

What’s more, cybercrimes are peak during the holiday season. “We tend to see more phishing attacks during the holidays when people’s inboxes are flooded with shopping, travel, and marketing emails,” says Vlad Cristescu, head of cybersecurity at ZeroBounce. “Nobody is immune to these attacks, but there are steps you can take to prevent them,” he adds. 

Here are four things you can do today to keep your customers and business safe during the holidays—and beyond.

1. Make Your Emails More Secure

In fighting spoofing and phishing attacks, your first line of defense is email authentication. “Using strong security protocols—like DMARC, SPF, and DKIM—ensures that the emails sent from your business are genuine. These protocols verify your identity and prevent impersonators from sending emails on your behalf and scamming your customers,” Cristescu explains.

This year, large email service providers like Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft made email authentication mandatory for mass senders. If you send more than 5,000 daily emails and they aren’t authenticated, they may go to spam. So, adopt these protocols to secure your domain and get your campaigns in the inbox.

2. Educate Your Customers

Helping your customers understand the danger of phishing emails reduces the chance they’ll fall for a scam that pretends to be from your company. “Talk about these risks in your emails, especially during the holiday season. Let your customers know what kind of information you’ll never ask for, and share simple tips on detecting phishing attempts,” Cristescu recommends. 

3. Give Your Customers a Way to Report Phishing Scams

Adding a one-click “report phishing” option in your emails lets your customers flag scams right away. It also allows you to respond quickly and alert your entire list about the fraudulent message. “You must also report the scam to your internal security team and to email providers. They can work together to block the scammer’s domain or IP address,” ZeroBounce’s cybersecurity expert advises.

4. Offer Multi-Factor Authentication

Grabbing codes and clicking verification links feels like a hassle to most of us, but it’s one of the best ways to protect your customers’ accounts. Make the setup process simple, and encourage your customers to enable multi-factor authentication. If they do share sensitive information with a scammer, this extra security step protects their account.

 

This article was written by Liviu Tanase from Inc. and was legally licensed through the DiveMarketplace by Industry Dive. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@industrydive.com.