No matter how well built your infrastructure is, your last line of defense is the human interaction, or the “human firewall”. A phishing email is still one of the most common attacks for cybercriminals to gain access to a company’s infrastructure. With this in mind, security management teams are finding new ways to protect their organization from these types of attacks, one of which is phishing training.
A cyberattack can have multiple negative effects for an organization such as:
- A decrease in the number of new customers
- Existing customers wanting to leave
- Reputational damage
- Financial costs for threat remediation
According to Verizon’s 2018 Data Breach Investigations Report, 30% of phishing messages get opened by targeted users.
With appealing opening rates such as these, it’s no wonder cybercriminals continue to target victims both weak and strong.
How Phishing Training can help an organization:
- Reporting data – Some phishing training software providers show data about attachments opened, number of clicks, and if the email was reported to the security team. This will allow you to identify individuals within your organization who consistently fail the phishing simulation.
- Awareness of phishing attacks – Phishing attack simulation shows your employees how successful an attack can potentially be. This can raise awareness within your workforce about a vulnerability that currently exists.
Common challenges around Phishing Training:
- Cybersecurity may not be everyone’s forte – Your workforce is the best at what they do. However not all employees will fully understand phishing training and as cyber attacks develop, this could leave a potential blind spot within your organization.
- Time and resources – Old habits are hard to break. Phishing training is an ongoing process that requires employees to take time out of their day-to-day tasks to keep on top of these simulated attacks. As a result, people may rush through the training modules in order to return back to their usual work, resulting in inaccurate reporting data.
- Information overload – Employees have to remember a lot of information every day. Adding phishing training and internal policies on top of everyday tasks can cause information overload for employees, potentially leading to rushed decisions such as forgetting to double-check that the from address aligns with a record in the system.
- Blame culture – Phishing training and the subsequent testing promotes a culture of blame. Whilst testing helps to identify the people who regularly fail the training, the continual re-testing can be viewed by employees as unfair treatment or even punishment.
How to improve Phishing Training
Although phishing training increases employee awareness about potential threats, the majority of training tools will present your employees as the biggest vulnerability to your organization. Often, the training provided may not be as up to date as some of the real-life phishing attacks, making it impossible for your employees to be able to identify all types of cyberattack and leaving vulnerabilities. Providing your employees with tools that compliment existing phishing training can significantly reduce the impact of these threats.
OnINBOX by Red Sift replaces employee guesswork with expertise by acting as a security expert inside every email, providing a rigorous technical risk assessment before telling the recipient if it’s safe to trust the email or not when they open it. Everyone in your organization can be empowered by risk indicators inside the email itself to help them confidently spot risks, effectively reducing the burden of false positives on security teams and removing the “train and blame” culture.
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