How to protect organization from phishing?

Challenge

90% of corporate security breaches are caused by human error*. Such a mistake is sometimes clicking on a dangerous link or attachment sent in an email, which is a phishing attack. Forecasts predict that companies will lose more than $5 trillion over the next 5 years due to social engineering attacks of this type*. How do you protect yourself from them?

A healthcare company has struggled with attempts to launch phishing attacks on its employees’ email inboxes. In them, cybercriminals impersonated familiar recipients and addresses. Employees clicked on dangerous links, putting both themselves and the company at risk of having their data taken or lost. The danger was great: 30% of the more than 5,000 employees regularly fell into traps set by cybercriminals.

This was due to the following problems faced by the organization:

Lack of user awareness of online threats.
Lack of educational tools.
Lack of solutions to report phishing attacks.

Solution

The European Union Cyber Security Agency’s report on phishing states explicitly that “the primary way to effectively protect data is through employee education.” Therefore, a company should provide a tool that allows users to recognize attacks. Such a solution is the Educational Anti-Phishing Platform.

What does education with its help consist of? First of all, on creating simulations of attacks based on artificial intelligence. With each employee’s progress, the system acquires new data, thanks to which it is able to create more effective and sophisticated emails impersonating known recipients in the future.

If an employee clicks on the link, he or she is given information on what to watch out for. He is also directed to the Academy, which contains quizzes, infographics, videos and articles on cyberattacks.

In addition, he receives a plug-in for his email client in the form of a report button, with which he can flag an attempt to carry out a social engineering attack. If the simulation is flagged, he receives information about its positive recognition. In the case of a real attack, the email and data are routed to analysts.

Effects

In the six months since the introduction of the Educational Anti-Phishing Platform to the company's resources, employees have been successfully educated. Their awareness has resulted in a drop in click-through rates on links or attachments in phishing emails from an initial 30% to 8%. As expected, the next few months will succeed in lowering this rate below 5%.

We are waiting for your questions

*source: phished.io