Phishing emails are one of the most common social engineering techniques used by threat actors today due to such high success rates. About 3.4 billion phishing emails are sent every day, having cost victims worldwide roughly $50 billion in losses according to the FBI. With this in mind, it’s important you and your team have the proper training in place to recognize and report a phishing email in order to avoid compromising your network, data, business, and reputation.
Below are some of the risks posed by phishing emails and how Mitnick Security can fortify your cybersecurity posture from cyber threats.
Cybersecurity Risks of Phishing Emails
Phishing emails can come across your inbox as a wide variety of different messages, including but not limited to:
- Emails from/for your boss requesting information
- “Account Verification” requests
- Phony invoices, requesting bank information
- Microsoft Teams message notifications
- Promotions for products with QR codes to scan
With the recent advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), these phishing attempts have become more convincing and not as easy to spot. The usual spelling and grammatical errors may not be present to make it obvious, while logos, language, and images can be pretty much spot on.
These emails can lead you to malicious websites containing malware, resulting in your personal information or sensitive company data being compromised. If credentials are requested and provided, the keys to the company kingdom may very well have just been handed over to threat actors who can now laterally move throughout the network to obtain their objectives.
Types of Phishing Emails
Standard Email Phishing. These don’t necessarily target anyone in particular, but they will represent a legitimate company and present some sort of request for information by providing links or documents to click on.
Spear Phishing. These are specifically targeted at end users with the use of name and familiarity, often with a sense of urgency, from someone who seems like a trusted person or entity requesting information such as login credentials, payment methods, sensitive information, etc.
Whaling. These target CEOs of companies and often appear to be coming from other executives. These typically involve requests for urgent assistance with financial matters or wire transfers of large sums of money.
Phishing Security Awareness Training
Phishing Security Awareness Training (SAT) involves walking through a social engineering attack focusing on phishing emails. A report in 2023 published by KnowBe4 revealed that 33.2% of untrained end users will fail a phishing test, which indicates the importance of consistent and ongoing phishing security awareness training. This is not a One and Done type of task; phishing attempts will continue to get more sophisticated and clever over time as they indeed already have. This leaves the onus on companies themselves to ensure their employees are properly trained up with the current tactics and techniques today’s threat actors are using.
A phishing security awareness test will give you an indication of how susceptible your team is to a phishing social engineering attack.
How the Test Works
1. A phishing security awareness test can be done with a small control group or be a company-wide endeavor. If you choose to go company-wide, this can provide insight to the departments that may be more prone to falling for phishing attempts due to the nature of their work (e.g. mortgage departments who receive a large influx of email communications on a regular basis that often require customers to provide attached documents). More targeted training can then be provided for these unfortunately susceptible employees.2. Once the emails are sent, employee behavior is tracked to see how many are likely to fall for a phishing attack. Click-through rates are added up as well how many actually provided credentials (not every employee will go all the way; some realize at some point along the way that something seems off and will back out of the process once begun). Ensure that there is a process in place for employees to report these emails, as that will be documented as well.
3. Following the attack, you and your team are provided with an overview of how the test performed and a list of best practices to employ immediately to ensure that you are prepared for any future attacks.
Reduce the Risk of Phishing Attacks With the Help of Mitnick Security
Phishing security awareness training is no longer something that can be bypassed or performed just once upon hire; it is too successful as an attack method, and the rising numbers prove it year after year. Keep your company and employees safe and Get Security Awareness Training from Mitnick Security.
