A framework to assist email users in the identification of phishing attacks

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework to address the problem that email users are not well-informed or assisted by their email clients in identifying possible phishing attacks, thereby putting their personal information at risk. This paper therefore addresses the human weakness (i.e. the user’s lack of knowledge of phishing attacks which causes them to fall victim to such attacks) as well as the software related issue of email clients not visually assisting and guiding the users through the user interface. Design/methodology/approach – A literature study was conducted in the main field of information security with a specific focus on understanding phishing attacks and a modelling technique was used to represent the proposed framework. This paper argues that the framework can be suitably implemented for email clients to raise awareness about phishing attacks. To validate the framework as a plausible mechanism, it was reviewed by a focus group within the School of Information and Com...