Regular phishing training and testing - don’t get caught out!

In today’s technological working environment, it’s well known that phishing attacks are a regular, and dangerous threat to business as they commonly catch out many unsuspecting victims. In fact, IRONSCALES’s statement below delivers some thought-provoking information on just how business critical it is to ensure your teams can spot a phishing attempt:

“According to recent research from IRONSCALES, 81% of organizations around the world have experienced an increase in email phishing attacks since March 2020. Despite the very real threat that phishing poses to businesses today, almost 1 in 5 organizations only deliver phishing awareness training to their employees once per year. This lack of awareness is a large contributing factor to the fact that phishing remains the threat type most likely to cause a data breach. In fact, according to Verizon’s 2021 DBIR, around 25% of all data breaches involve phishing and 85% of data breaches involve a human element.”[1]

The evidence is clear. Businesses need to continue to regularly train and test their employees to avoid any phishing-related attacks.

Are phishing attacks on the rise?

Many of us are now working remotely either full or part time. This has resulted in far more successful phishing attacks occurring on a much larger scale. The main reason for the rise is due to employees using their own computers and devices to access important corporate locations and files. Without the protection that’s in place on corporate computers, company data can be easily compromised.

On a work computer, your business can enforce updates that are run and installed on each endpoint, with your users on personal devices, this is not as simple. Without the automation of critical updates, there’s an additional risk that security updates will be ignored, unavailable, or simply forgotten, leaving your business with an obvious, and highly concerning weakness.

Unfortunately, it’s been noted that users working from home or remotely can develop a general lack of cyber security protocols. For businesses, any flaw in your cyber security protocol is a weakness that cyber attackers can leverage. With current global events, sophisticated phishing attacks are being curated to seem like genuine requests for humanitarian support and relief. These despicable attacks are specifically targeted to pray on those hoping to do make a positive change in the world.

Remote working brought with it the ability to target users in their home environments, meaning that cyber criminals are better able to leverage users where they feel safe, and with a lack of IT support. With cyber-attacks on the rise, your business and your staff need to be trained and prepared.

Here’s our predictions for the 2022 cyber security landscape, especially phishing.

Combat successful phishing attacks with REGULAR testing & training

Successful phishing attacks are, more often than not, successful due to human error. Your staff, colleagues and associates can be your weakest line, so it’s highly important that you train and test your staff well.

Regular cyber security testing and training should be viewed as a business-critical priority.

When looking at how you test and train your staff, you will need to ensure that such activities are effective, relevant and tailored to your team. For this, you must establish a baseline at which your business operates. From there, considering any requisitions such as client requirements, you can formulate a regular testing and training programme.

Your staff are your first line of defence. Don’t set them up for failure. Protect your team and protect your business by providing them with the tools they need to succeed. This is achieved through regular testing and training. Monitor performance, identify weakness and praise staff.

Protect your business:

In order to protect your business, as discussed, you should regularly test and train your team. There’re many ways to do this but to start with, we’d recommend that you run an initial Phishing Security Test. You’ll be able to see, live, how your employees deal with, and respond to a phishing attack, from there, you can better evaluate how your business would cope with an attack, and also learn how your company compares to your peers and industry benchmarks.

Book your phishing test here:

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After your initial test, you should provide your team with regular training and testing, the cyber threat changes regularly, so your teams need up-to-date knowledge of new threats. Keep doing these tests and you’ll be able to strengthen your defences.

As cyber criminals continually redefine and improve their attacks, training should not be a one-time, yearly PowerPoint presentation. It’s highly recommended that thorough and regular training and testing needs to be in place.

If you’d like to find out more about how Sweethaven can help improve your cyber security, ensure your staff have the knowledge they need to protect your business, and to set in place a stronger cyber defense, please enquire below.

In the meantime, why not request a copy of our Free Phishing Security Test checklist? This will give you an initial understanding of how your business is doing to combat phishing attacks, as well as identifying some immediate areas for improvement.