To be unaware of the ever-growing number of costly, sophisticated cyberattacks hitting companies, one must have lived under a rock for the last two decades.
Unfortunately, however, the majority of people don’t know that most of these attacks started with something as trivial as an email.
A phishing test will shed light on your company’s vulnerability to phishing attacks. Keep reading to discover four solid reasons why you should conduct a phishing test on your employees.
- What Are You Risking By Not Conducting A Phishing Test?
- 1. A Phishing Test Will Assess Your Company's Vulnerability To Phishing Attacks
- 2. Running Phishing Tests Regularly Will Help You Constantly Monitor The Risk
- 3. Testing Will Reveal Which Employees Need Additional Training
- Educate Your Employees With ATTACK Simulator's Phishing Simulations
What Are You Risking By Not Conducting A Phishing Test?
Phishing attacks start with an email.
Let’s analyze this scenario. One of your employees receives a message from the ‘Help Desk’ reminding them to update a password. At first glance, nothing unusual catches the recipient’s eye, as the sender appears to be genuine. In addition, oftentimes, the email will prompt the employee to take immediate action or lose access to their account.
They will click the link contained in the email and land on a page strikingly resembling a legitimate company page. Only, it’s a credential-stealing phishing page. Now, the attacker has access to the victim’s email and your organization’s network.
Obviously, not training your employees on what phishing is and how phishing attacks work is a big (and potentially expensive) mistake. Such attacks result in data theft, ransomware, extortion, and ultimately, colossal financial and reputation damage.
Proper security awareness training will help you avoid these nasty risks and push for a safer environment.
Choosing not to test your employees will leave you in the dark regarding their level of knowledge in the cybersecurity field and your company’s vulnerability to cyberattacks.
1. A Phishing Test Will Assess Your Company’s Vulnerability To Phishing Attacks
Phishing is an attack in which cybercriminals pretend to be a reputable entity or person, engaging various ways of online communication to distribute malicious links or attachments that can perform a variety of functions, but to one single end: stealing the victim’s data for financial gain.
Spear phishing is a special form of phishing – a targeted attempt to steal sensitive information from a specific victim for malicious reasons, such as account credentials or financial information. This is the most effective method of obtaining sensitive information on the internet, accounting for 91% of all attacks.
Businesses worldwide send and receive about 130 billion emails a day. Almost half of them are spam. Although many of them will never make it to the inbox, it only takes a person to click on a link or a malware-infected attachment to compromise an entire company.
Conducting a phishing test will indicate the risk your company is currently exposed to, helping you decide which security measures will work best for you, according to your workers’ level of knowledge.
2. Running Phishing Tests Regularly Will Help You Constantly Monitor The Risk
We recommend you test your employees regularly to make sure you keep a close eye on your company’s phishing attacks risk exposure, and overall security.
This will help you decide whether you should strengthen the security protocols practiced in your company.
Testing should happen regularly, in the form of automated phishing simulations, integrated into a comprehensive and solid security awareness training program.
3. Testing Will Reveal Which Employees Need Additional Training
Phishers are getting more creative by the day, so the security awareness training program you choose needs to feature phishing simulations that can replicate the effectiveness of the real thing.
Conducting a phishing test will indicate which of your employees needs more rigorous training and help you establish the security practices that suit your company best.
Phishing is on the rise and won’t be going anywhere anytime soon, and it only takes one unsuspecting employee to expose your entire company.
Educate Your Employees With ATTACK Simulator’s Phishing Simulations
Thinking you’ll dodge the bullet (or hook)? Think again. Figures paint a rather grim cybercrime landscape.
Phishing attacks can be catastrophic, resulting in immense financial damage or even the end of your business. Unfortunately, phishers don’t sleep on your company’s weaknesses. Your employees make for the weakest, thus most attractive targets, so you should seriously consider making security awareness training a top priority.
You need security awareness training for your employees for many reasons:
- To prevent cyberattacks and breaches
- To strenghten your technological defenses
- To attract more customers
- To make you more socially responsible
- To empower your employees
- To meet compliance standards
- To prevent downtimes and maintain a good reputation
To shed some light on your company’s current exposure and vulnerability to phishing attacks, we strongly advise you to use our free security awareness training trial.
Our realistic phishing simulations will expose your employees to life-like hands-on fake phishing attacks.
Here are some awesome perks of choosing us:
- Automated attack simulation – we simulate all kinds of cyberattacks: phishing, malware, ransomware, spear-phishing, identity theft, online privacy attacks, online scams etc.
- Real-life scenarios – we evaluate users’ vulnerability to give company-related or pesonal data away using realistic web-pages.
- User behavior analysis – we gather user data and compile it in extensive reports to give you a detailed picture of your employees’ security awareness level.
- Malicious file replicas – our emails contain malware file replicas, to make the simulation as realistic as it can be.
- Interactive lessons – if employees fail to recognize our traps and fall into one, they will be redirected to landing pages with quick reads on the best security practices.
- We impersonate popular brands on our simulated phishing pages – the user will be more tempted to click on the URL or open the attachment in the email.
ATTACK Simulator’s Security Awareness Training program will help you equip your employees with the necessary security knowledge and up-to-date security practices to keep your company safe from scammers and avoid potentially irremediable damage.
Attribution:
Feature Image: Network vector created by freepik – www.freepik.com
