Your people are the beating heart of your organisation. Unfortunately, they’re also a common gateway for cybercriminals to gain access to your data and systems.
Social engineering is a tactic cybercriminals use, which involves manipulating people into giving away sensitive information or taking actions that compromise security. Unlike other, traditional cyberattacks, social engineering attacks exploit human behaviour, rather than software vulnerabilities. They usually follow four steps:
- Identifying a target, gathering information about the victim, the systems they use and any weak security protocols.
- Hooking the victim, using social engineering techniques to gain their trust.
- Exploiting access, to gain sensitive data or profit financially from the deception.
- Making an exit, ending the interaction and covering their tracks.
Social engineering attacks are particularly effective because your staff may think they are doing all the right things – but not realise who is on the receiving end of their actions.
Preventing phishing and smishing
Some 1.76 billion phishing emails were sent in 2023, up more than 50% on the year before. Although the spam filters used by email platforms are getting more sophisticated in their detection of phishing emails, it’s still the cybercriminal’s method of choice. That’s because people continue to fall for it, making it incredibly lucrative. Spoofing, impersonation and embedding malware as attachments or in malicious links in emails remain the most common tactics.
Smishing – usually, impersonating a trusted company or contact – and vishing (the AI-powered voice version) are on the rise, too. When employees are tired, defences are lowered. Friday afternoon attacks are still commonplace, particularly in the legal sector.
All this is to say it’s incredibly hard for your people – and you – to spot when something isn’t as it should be. Phishing attacks are no longer easy to identify because of spelling mistakes or erroneous sender domains. It’s become more sophisticated than that.
Security Awareness Training is crucial
Telling your employees what to watch out for as part of their induction simply won’t cut the mustard anymore. Your people will be exposed to sophisticated phishing and ransomware attacks from day one.
We see Security Awareness Training as integral to most cybersecurity postures. Our managed services offering, powered by leading provider KnowBe4, involves assessing the needs of your organisation, integrating the training so it becomes second nature to your people, acting as a single point of contact for queries, support and reporting, and combining all of that into a fully flexible per-seat cost.
Our security awareness training assesses how prone to phishing tactics your staff are by sending a simulated phishing attack around the organisation. Once that’s been established, best practice can be reinforced with a library of engaging training content, including interactive modules, videos, games, posters and newsletters, plus regular reminder emails. Then you can choose to simulate another phishing attack from thousands of templates, compiling the results to see how protected your business truly is on its human front line.
KnowBe4 calculated that roughly 34% of business users would be easily deceived by a phishing attack. That rate can be nearly halved 90 days after completing their security awareness training. One year on, after reinforcing best practice, that ‘phish-prone percentage’ can be reduced to just 4.6% on average.
Treat phishing with the seriousness it deserves
Don’t let your staff be a potential gateway to your business for cybercriminals. We highly recommend security awareness training and simulated phishing to almost every business – please get in touch to find out more about how it can bolster your cybersecurity posture.