Phishing is the #1 way attackers get into business networks — and it works because it targets people, not software. Here's how to catch it before you click.
Your firewall, your antivirus, your EDR platform — all of it can be bypassed the moment someone on your team clicks a convincing link in a bad email. That's not a flaw in the technology. It's the whole point of phishing: go around the defenses by fooling the human.
The good news is that phishing emails have tells. Consistent, learnable tells that anyone can spot with a few seconds of attention — no technical background required. In this episode of NerdSquad Tech Tips, our CEO walks through a real simulated phishing email and identifies every red flag in real time, using the same kind of test we send to client teams as part of security awareness training.
Watch it. Then share it with your team.
A phishing email is a fraudulent message designed to trick the recipient into revealing sensitive information or clicking a malicious link. They're engineered to look legitimate — often impersonating recognizable brands like Microsoft, your bank, Meta, or even a colleague — and they're designed to create a sense of urgency that short-circuits careful thinking.
For businesses in healthcare and financial services, the stakes are especially high. A single successful phishing attack can result in a HIPAA breach notification, a regulatory investigation, ransomware deployment, or credential theft that opens your entire network to an attacker.
Phishing emails almost always lead with urgency or alarm. "Your account has been locked." "Immediate action required." "Unauthorized access detected." The goal is to get you acting before you're thinking. Any subject line that makes your pulse spike a little deserves an extra five seconds of scrutiny before you do anything else.
Grammar issues, awkward phrasing, or language that feels slightly off are also strong indicators. Legitimate companies have copywriters. Phishing emails often don't.
If you weren't expecting a file, treat it as suspicious regardless of who it appears to be from. Files ending in .exe, .zip, or oddly named PDFs are common delivery mechanisms for malware. Even if the email looks like it came from a colleague, verify directly before opening — attackers frequently spoof internal addresses or compromise email accounts to send malicious files.
This is the most reliable tell and takes about two seconds to check. The display name might say "Microsoft Support" or "Facebook Security Team," but the actual email address behind it will reveal the truth. Hover over the sender name — or tap it on mobile — to see the full address. A legitimate Microsoft email will end in @microsoft.com. Anything else — @microsoft-alerts.com, @ms-securityteam.net — is not Microsoft.
The link text might say "Click here to verify your account," but the actual destination URL is what matters. Hover over any link before clicking and look at the full URL in the status bar. Phishing links use tricks like subdomains (facebook.attacker-domain.com — the real domain is attacker-domain.com, not Facebook), misspellings (rnicrosoftonline.com), or extra characters to disguise the real destination. If the domain doesn't look exactly right, don't click.
User awareness is a critical layer of defense — but it can't be the only one. Here's what we layer underneath it for clients.
We run controlled phishing simulations — realistic test emails sent to your team without warning. When someone clicks, they're redirected to a brief training page rather than a malicious site. It's a low-stakes way to identify who needs more education and to build the habit of scrutiny before clicking. Over time, click rates drop significantly.
Our email security tools automatically scan every link in every incoming message, even before the recipient sees it. Suspicious links get flagged or rerouted through a secure proxy for analysis. Most phishing attacks that slip past user judgment get caught at this layer.
Beyond basic spam filtering, enterprise email security platforms analyze sender reputation, domain age, header anomalies, and content patterns to catch phishing attempts that are designed to look clean. This is a meaningful step up from whatever filtering comes built into your email provider by default.
Pause before you click. That's it. Most phishing attacks succeed because the recipient reacted immediately. A deliberate two-second check of the sender address and the link destination — before taking any action — stops the majority of phishing attempts cold.
Train your team to make that pause a reflex. It's the most cost-effective security investment you can make.
Want to protect your inbox and train your team against phishing?