It is important to be proactive and provide phishing email training to everyone in the company. You should not totally rely on email security solutions for blocking phishing attacks, as phishing emails will land in inboxes even with the most effective anti-phishing solutions in place.
The Growing Threat of Phishing
Phishing is one of the most effective ways of gaining access to the networks of businesses. Phishing requires little in the way of skill, threat actors can conduct campaigns cheaply, and sufficient numbers of employees respond and unwittingly provide their credentials or install malware to make the campaigns very profitable. There is no shortage of buyers for access to business networks or the data that phishers can steal. According to ESET’s T1 2022 Threat Report, there was a 37% increase in phishing attacks compared to the last four months of 2022 and there are no signs that phishing attacks will slow.
Phishing Email Training Tips
Technological anti-phishing defenses have never been more important, but even with multiple layers of protection, phishing emails will still land in inboxes. The aim of implementing these solutions is to reduce the volume of threats that are delivered, not to eliminate them entirely. To improve your defenses against phishing attacks you should not neglect the human element. Employees need to be trained on how to identify phishing attacks, as, without those skills, they are likely to respond to phishing emails. To help you with phishing email training, we have provided some phishing email training tips for getting the best ROI from your investment in training.
Provide Everyone with Phishing Email Training
Phishing campaigns can be conducted randomly, which means any individual in the company may encounter a threat. Phishing email training should therefore be provided to everyone. Spear phishing targets individuals with the highest privileges (C-Suite members) and individuals responsible for payroll and making wire transfers. Don’t neglect training the C-Suite and ensure that training is specific to the threats individuals are likely to encounter.
Use a Training Platform with Engaging and Gamified Content
You can develop your own training content, but the best approach is to use a training vendor. Training vendors develop effective, engaging, and gamified training content that has been tested to ensure it is effective. The interactive and enjoyable training content will improve knowledge retention, and the platforms will track who has completed training. These platforms make conducting security awareness and phishing email training as easy as possible.
Provide Training on a Broad Range of Phishing Techniques
One of the problems with defending against phishing is the variety of phishing scams used in the attacks. New lures, tactics, techniques, and procedures are also constantly being developed. It is important to provide basic training on all forms of phishing to the workforce, and to provide a broad range of examples of phishing emails to employees to demonstrate the various threats they may encounter. The phishing training content should reflect real-world threats and should be updated as phishing tactics evolve.
Provide Training Regularly in Small Doses
Conducting a 2-hour training session once a year is likely to see employees switch off and knowledge retention will be poor. Frequent 10-minute training modules are likely to be more effective at improving understanding of threats and teaching employees about specific scams than lengthy training sessions provided once a year.
Conduct Phishing Email Simulations
Before and after training, consider conducting phishing simulations. Conducting these simulations on employees before and after phishing email training will help you gauge how effective the training has been. Phishing simulations allow employers to identify employees that need further training and discover knowledge gaps that can be addressed in future training sessions. Simulations give employees practical experience in identifying phishing threats and practice makes perfect.
Make it Easy for Employees to Report Suspicious Emails
You should train employees how to recognize and avoid phishing threats but also report to them when they are encountered. You should make this as easy as possible, ideally by using a mail client add-on that allows the reporting of phishing threats with a single click. If one employee receives a phishing email, it is almost certain that others in the organization will also have received them, and the IT department should remove all copies from the email system. The IT department also needs to investigate how the emails have bypassed email security defenses to allow tweaks to be made to block the threats in the future.
The SafeTitan Phishing Email Training Platform from TitanHQ
SafeTitan from TitanHQ is a comprehensive security awareness training platform for business and managed service providers for creating engaging training courses for all members of the workforce. The platform covers hundreds of topics and delivers training in bite-sized modules of no more than 8-10 minutes. The content includes written material, videos, and interactive training content that maximizes knowledge retention, along with quizzes to test whether the training has been understood.
The platform also includes a phishing simulation platform with hundreds of phishing templates taken from real-world phishing attacks, with ample scope for customization to meet the needs of all businesses. When employees fail a phishing test, the platform notifies them immediately and provides training tailored to that specific failure in real-time.
The training platform has been proven to significantly improve security awareness of the workforce and greatly reduce susceptibility to phishing attacks. For more information, contact us today.
