Most successful online attacks begin when someone clicks and downloads a malicious attachment from an email, receives direct message or through social media post. This happens due to lack of phishing awareness. These phishing attempts can result in compromised identify and accounts, stolen credentials that criminals can use to steal data or money. Phishing can also result in the user inadvertently downloading malware that damages systems or installing ransomware that holds systems captive.

Phishing poses one of the top threat to organizations. The good news is that most security breaches are avoidable if people are trained to spot and avoid phishing emails. Are you training your employees? With lack of right training, employees can serve as access points for cyber phishing. However, many phishing awareness training programs are out-of-date and fail to address modern phishing techniques and strategies. SyberNow offers phishing awareness training to protect organizational email. A best-in-class program that teaches phishing awareness through real-worlds crime simulations. It’s vital for employees to be trained on how to spot and report phishing attacks before they can cause financial, operational or reputational damage.

After all, it only takes one successful phishing attempt to wreak havoc.

Employees should be able to identify from the basic signs of phishing emails or messages. For example, strange or unexpected requests, often using alarming language or urging immediate action. These messages often appear to come from colleagues within the company, or banks or a trusted source. Malicious actors are improving their techniques all the time. Hence employees need to repeat training at regular intervals to learn about the latest scams. Phishing training moves the needle on improving employee response to phishing attacks. Using tutorials and tests, phishing training for employees teaches how to spot phishing emails better and how to respond to these dangerous threats.

But most phishing simulation programs are difficult to operate, complicated to customize and integrate with your entire cyber security awareness programs. Therefore, many companies find that phishing training and the overall phish testing solutions don’t actually perform as expected.

SyberNow provides managed phishing simulations services. We make it easy and productive by integrating phishing tests with the rest of our cloud-based awareness training platform and cybersecurity offerings. With SyberNow, there’s no need to integrate systems, to hire consultants, everything is at your fingertips, ready to go.

There’s a common misconception that phishing scams are easy to spot and that only people who are non-technical or naive would fall victim. There’s also the false security of over-relying on technology to prevent phishing or thinking that “our business is unlikely to be a target”.

The truth is, phishing attacks still work and are growing in prevalence and sophistication each year. A combination of ‘spray and pray’ attempts is mixed in with hyper-targeted spear-phishing attacks. Worrying percentages make it past your secure email gateway (SEG) and into your users’ mailboxes. Social engineering attacks increasingly target your high-risk users. The 2023 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report shows email alone is the highest cause of data breaches.

SyberNow phishing training includes both cybersecurity awareness training and simulated phishing campaigns.

Phishing training is a part of SyberNow Awareness Training program that uses highly entertaining video content to engage employees in security awareness. Packaged in 2-3 minute long provided continuous basis. Phishing awareness Training has OTT type movie series that are inspired by real world cybercrime stories. Each episode has multiple interesting characters to keep employees interested and engaged.

Ideally, in phishing awareness, two aspects are key! One is phishing attacks that employ real-world tactics typically encountered in actual cyber-attacks. Exposing employees to realistic scenarios teaches them to effectively recognize and respond to various phishing techniques.

Second aspect is security awareness. This is crucial and can be conducted using diver approach. For example, immediate learning opportunities following simulated phishing attacks and comprehensive training modules encompassing various cybersecurity topics. Additionally, activities like gamification to increase phishing awareness and consistent communication about phishing risks. It plays a significant role in transforming an organization’s overall security culture.

These two phishing awareness training elements educate and empower employees and significantly improve the organization’s overall security defenses.

SyberNow phishing testing is an integrated module that lets you configure and launch a simulated phishing attack in just minutes. You can choose from templates based on real phishing emails – such as emails asking you to reset your password or to track a package – and you can customize the text and content to reflect the kinds of phishing attempts your employees are likely to see.

SyberNow phishing training technology gives you full control over which messages each employee sees and when, with test results combined with training data to provide an individualized risk score for each employee. Our powerful cybersecurity awareness training learning tool is specially designed for helping users understand the risks with real-world examples.

Baseline your training – Analysing employees that are vulnerable to phishing provides a useful metric for measuring progress at a later date.

Highlight where additional training is needed – Deploying periodic simulations enable businesses to detect users that are at medium and high risk of falling victim and who may need some extra training compared to low risk employees.

Measure the impact of training – Deploying phishing simulations at regular interval and tailored per the risk profile of employee provides a useful insight into how effective their awareness training has been and if the subsequent plan of action is needed to manage the risk.

Having helped businesses to reduce their employees human cyber risk, SyberNow knows what it takes to truly drive employee phishing awareness.

In conclusion phishing awareness is the security strategy many IT Professionals use to reduce the likelihood of human-driven security breaches in organizations.

Phishing awareness training involves educating employees about the tactics used in phishing attacks, how to recognize them through simulation, and the steps to take when faced with a potential threat. Given that phishing attacks are the leading cause of security breaches, this training becomes a vital and cost-effective solution to strengthen a business’s security posture.

You may refer CISA blog on Avoiding Social Engineering and Phishing Attacks

Follow These Steps to Avoid Phishing Scams:

1. Identify available training resources and train employees how to spot & report phishing.

2. Alert employees to the risks.

3. Develop a culture of awareness.