Stop Phishing in its Tracks in the Coronavirus Economy: People are Your Greatest Asset

Remember: people are your greatest asset.

Email, while an effective communication tool, wasn’t designed to fend off security threats. These phishing attacks are surprisingly common as in 2018 alone, over 80% of all email users received phishing emails. Businesses don’t escape the grasp of phishing attacks - 64% of businesses experienced a phishing attack in 2018.

There are billions of spam emails sent every day yet many can’t recognize the signs of a fake email. Nearly a third of people have been compromised due to a phishing attack by having a computer or other device infected with a virus or malware or having a social media account hacked into. Users aren’t the only ones who can lose data and accounts, businesses can even take a harder hit as the lost time, reputation damage, and data loss can contribute to the average of $2 million lost per incident.

Repelling the attacks of hackers has gotten harder since 2016, say over 70% of employees. This is because phishing doesn’t target the software, it targets the user. These phishing attacks make us feel the need to click a malicious link by abusing the human brain. Phishing attacks can create a false sense of urgency to force us to ignore possible red flags, or by mimicking real personal messages to make us feel more secure, or by preying upon our fear of missing out on crucial information. 

Bracing against phishing attacks is severely underdeveloped by employers and employees alike as training is rarely done more than once per year. Even with this training, 1 in 10 have clicked a malicious link in a phishing email and 35% don’t know what ‘phishing’ means.

The majority of hackers say that with an organization’s security measures, they are rarely impressed by it. Learn more about how to make people your greatest using an email phishing tool here: