4 Ways to Protect Your Business from Phishing

Building a business is hard work, and keeping it running is even harder. While there are many factors that could lead to a business’s downfall, one of the most common ones is a tainted reputation. When your reputation gets tainted, people no longer trust you and will not want to do business with you. Phishing is notorious for this because when someone pretends to be your business online, they can do irreversible damage to your business’s or brand’s reputation. So, how do you stop this from happening?

Phishing

Monitor Your Business and Brand Online

Monitoring your business online will let you know every time someone mentions your business or brand. This is very helpful because fraudulent businesses that pretend to be you will often use your brand or business name in their schemes. Setting up Google Alerts is a great wat to find out when you are mentioned online, who has mentioned you, and the context within which this has happened.

When setting up the alerts, you could also set them up to alert you of similar phrases or terms that could confuse people and make them think they are dealing with your business. There are also helpful tools that will help you monitor social media websites, which are where most phishing happens. Once you identify people or businesses pretending to be you, you could take steps to shut them down so that customers or other businesses that trust you do not end up sending them sensitive information.

Make Sure People Know Your Correct Website Domain Name

Entities that carry out phishing scams will usually use domain names that are very similar to yours. For example, if your business is located at example.com, they could use example.org to confuse people. It is vital that you let people know about your actual website domain name, so they are never funnelled towards a fraudulent one.

Major social media websites like Facebook also purchase domain names that are similar to theirs and point those towards their website. This reduces the number of potential domain names attackers could use to trick people. While it may be expensive to do this, it is a worthy investment.

Report Social Media Phishing

If you find someone impersonating you, your business or brand, it is important to report them. This will stop them from damaging your reputation, and it can serve as a deterrent so they do not do this to others. Get in touch with law enforcement in your locality to see what steps you can take.

Also, ensure you report them on the platform they are using. Major social media sites like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook have support pages where you can get help or report phishing scams.

Educate Your Social Media Team

While you might know how to identify and report social media phishing scams, it is important that you teach your team to do the same. When doing this, ensure everyone on the team knows all your social media handles and website domains. That way, they will have the right knowledge to identify which accounts are real and which are being used by scammers. As a business owner, it is your responsibility to keep everyone safe while protecting your business or brand from phishing. Learning to identify phishing attacks and staying vigilant will go a long way in helping you keep your business reputation intact and protect those who interact with your business.

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