In December 2020, the Treasury Department and the Department of Commerce confirmed they'd been breached through a supply chain attack that started, in part, with carefully crafted phishing emails targeting key personnel. If federal agencies with dedicated security teams can get caught, your organization isn't immune either. Knowing how to avoid phishing attacks isn't optional anymore — it's survival.
I've spent years watching organizations hemorrhage money and data because someone clicked a link in a convincing email. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) reported over $54 million in losses from phishing and related attacks in 2020 alone. And that number only accounts for what gets reported. The real figure is much higher.
This guide is the playbook I wish every organization had pinned to their wall. No theory. No fluff. Just the specific, practical steps that actually stop phishing attacks from succeeding.
Why Phishing Still Works in 2021
Phishing isn't a technology problem. It's a human problem. Every threat actor knows that the cheapest way past a firewall is through a person's inbox.
According to the Verizon 2020 Data Breach Investigations Report, 22% of all data breaches involved phishing. It was the top threat action in confirmed breaches. That stat has barely budged in years because the attack works on a fundamental human vulnerability: trust.
Social engineering has evolved far beyond the Nigerian prince emails of the early 2000s. Today's phishing campaigns impersonate your CEO, your HR department, your cloud provider. They reference real projects. They use correct logos, proper grammar, and domains that differ from legitimate ones by a single character.
The shift to remote work in 2020 made things worse. Employees working from home are distracted, isolated from colleagues they'd normally verify requests with, and more reliant on email and chat. Threat actors noticed immediately.
The $4.88M Lesson Most Organizations Learn Too Late
IBM's 2020 Cost of a Data Breach Report pegged the average cost of a breach at $3.86 million globally. But breaches that started with phishing? Those averaged significantly higher because they often gave attackers persistent access to credentials and internal systems.
Here's what actually happens when a phishing attack succeeds. An employee clicks a link, enters credentials on a fake login page, and the attacker now owns that account. Within minutes, they're sending internal emails from a trusted address, escalating privileges, and moving laterally through your network. By the time your security team notices, data has already been exfiltrated or ransomware has been deployed.
I've seen this pattern repeat at companies of every size. The initial phishing email is just the first domino.
How to Avoid Phishing Attacks: 9 Steps That Actually Work
Knowing how to avoid phishing attacks requires layering technical controls with trained human judgment. Neither alone is enough. Here's the specific combination I recommend.
1. Train Your People — Then Train Them Again
Security awareness training is the single highest-ROI investment you can make against phishing. But it has to be ongoing, not a once-a-year checkbox exercise.
Effective training teaches employees to recognize the psychological triggers phishing relies on: urgency, authority, fear, and curiosity. It should include real-world examples from recent campaigns, not generic slides from 2015. Our cybersecurity awareness training program covers exactly these scenarios with updated content that reflects current threat actor tactics.
The organizations I've seen with the lowest click rates train monthly. Not long sessions — 10 to 15 minutes. Consistent reinforcement beats annual marathons every time.
2. Run Phishing Simulations Regularly
You don't know how vulnerable your organization is until you test it. Phishing simulation campaigns send realistic but harmless phishing emails to your employees and track who clicks, who reports, and who enters credentials.
The data you get back is gold. It tells you which departments need more training, which attack types are most effective against your team, and whether your awareness program is actually working. Our phishing awareness training for organizations includes simulation capabilities designed for exactly this purpose.
Run simulations at least quarterly. Vary the templates — use fake invoice notifications, password reset requests, and executive impersonation emails. The more realistic, the better the training value.
3. Enable Multi-Factor Authentication Everywhere
Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is the single most effective technical control against credential theft from phishing. Even if an employee enters their password on a fake site, the attacker can't log in without the second factor.
Microsoft reported in 2019 that MFA blocks 99.9% of automated account compromise attacks. That number alone should make this a non-negotiable requirement for every account in your organization — email, VPN, cloud applications, admin consoles. All of them.
Use app-based authenticators or hardware security keys. SMS-based MFA is better than nothing, but it's vulnerable to SIM-swapping attacks.
4. Implement Email Authentication Protocols
If you haven't configured SPF, DKIM, and DMARC for your organization's email domains, you're leaving the front door open for impersonation. These protocols verify that emails claiming to come from your domain actually originated from your authorized mail servers.
DMARC in enforcement mode (p=reject) tells receiving mail servers to drop emails that fail authentication checks. This doesn't just protect your employees — it protects everyone who might receive a spoofed email pretending to come from your organization.
CISA has been urging organizations to adopt DMARC for years. In 2021, there's no excuse for not having it in place.
5. Deploy Advanced Email Filtering
Modern email security gateways use machine learning to analyze links, attachments, and sender behavior in real time. They catch the vast majority of phishing emails before they reach an inbox.
But don't rely on filtering alone. Sophisticated spear-phishing campaigns — especially business email compromise (BEC) attacks — often come from legitimate compromised accounts and pass standard email filters cleanly. That's why human training and technical controls must work together.
6. Establish a Clear Reporting Process
Your employees need a dead-simple way to report suspicious emails. A "Report Phish" button in their email client is ideal. If reporting requires forwarding to a special address, copying headers, and filling out a form, nobody will do it.
Make reporting culturally safe. I've worked with organizations where employees were afraid to report because they thought they'd get in trouble for clicking. That's backwards. You want people to report fast, even if they already clicked. The faster your security team knows about a campaign, the faster they can block the attacker's infrastructure and warn other employees.
7. Verify Unusual Requests Through a Separate Channel
This is the simplest advice in this entire post, and it prevents more damage than any technology: if you get an email requesting a wire transfer, credential change, or sensitive data — pick up the phone and verify it.
Don't reply to the email. Don't use the phone number in the email signature. Call the person directly using a number you already have. BEC attacks cost organizations $1.8 billion in 2020 according to the FBI IC3. A 30-second phone call prevents almost all of them.
8. Keep Software and Systems Updated
Phishing emails frequently deliver malware through attachments or links to exploit kits. Keeping operating systems, browsers, email clients, and plugins patched eliminates the vulnerabilities those exploits target.
Enable automatic updates wherever possible. Pay special attention to browser updates — the browser is the primary attack surface for phishing links that lead to credential harvesting pages or drive-by downloads.
9. Adopt a Zero Trust Mindset
Zero trust isn't just a network architecture — it's a philosophy. Never trust, always verify. Apply this to every email, every request, every login attempt.
From a technical standpoint, zero trust means segmenting your network so a compromised account can't reach everything, enforcing least-privilege access, and continuously monitoring for anomalous behavior. From a human standpoint, it means training employees to question everything, even messages that appear to come from trusted internal sources.
What Does a Phishing Email Actually Look Like?
This is the question I get asked most. Here are the specific red flags to watch for in every email:
- Urgency language: "Your account will be suspended in 24 hours." "Immediate action required."
- Mismatched URLs: Hover over links before clicking. If the displayed text says "microsoft.com" but the actual URL points to "m1crosoft-login.com," it's phishing.
- Unexpected attachments: Especially .zip, .exe, .docm, or .html files you weren't expecting.
- Generic greetings: "Dear Customer" or "Dear User" instead of your actual name.
- Spoofed sender addresses: The display name says "IT Support" but the email address is a random Gmail account.
- Requests for credentials or sensitive data: Legitimate organizations almost never ask for passwords via email.
- Slight domain variations: "company-support.com" instead of "company.com." Threat actors register lookalike domains constantly.
Train your eyes to catch these indicators automatically. It takes practice, which is exactly why ongoing security awareness programs and phishing simulations matter.
What to Do If You've Already Clicked
Speed matters. If you clicked a phishing link or entered credentials on a suspicious page, take these steps immediately:
- Change your password for the affected account right now. If you use the same password elsewhere (you shouldn't), change those too.
- Enable MFA on the compromised account if it isn't already active.
- Report it to your IT or security team immediately. Don't wait. Don't hope nobody notices.
- Monitor your accounts for unusual activity — unexpected login locations, email forwarding rules you didn't create, or unfamiliar sent messages.
- Scan your device with updated antimalware software, especially if you downloaded an attachment.
The window between a successful phish and full network compromise can be minutes. Every second you delay reporting gives the attacker more time to establish persistence, deploy ransomware, or exfiltrate data.
Phishing Is Evolving — Your Defenses Must Too
In early 2021, we're seeing phishing campaigns that exploit COVID-19 vaccine rollout confusion, SBA loan programs, and remote work tool updates. Threat actors follow the news cycle because it gives them ready-made pretexts that feel urgent and legitimate.
We're also seeing a rise in smishing (SMS phishing) and vishing (voice phishing) as attackers diversify their delivery channels. Your defenses can't focus exclusively on email anymore. Training needs to cover text messages, phone calls, and even collaboration platforms like Slack and Teams.
The organizations that stay ahead of phishing treat it as an ongoing operational challenge, not a one-time project. They combine technical controls — email filtering, MFA, zero trust architecture — with continuous human training and realistic phishing simulations.
Build Your Defense Before the Next Attack
Every organization will face phishing attempts. The question is whether your people and systems are ready to stop them. Understanding how to avoid phishing attacks is step one. Building the muscle memory and technical infrastructure to actually do it is step two.
Start with training that reflects real-world threats. Explore our cybersecurity awareness training to build foundational knowledge across your team. Then layer in targeted phishing awareness training with simulation exercises to test and reinforce what your employees have learned.
Phishing isn't going away. But with the right combination of training, technology, and vigilance, you can make your organization a hard target — and send threat actors looking for easier prey.