Phishing Simulation: Comprehensive Approach to Identify Cyber Risk
What is Phishing Simulation?
Someone has rightly said, “Knowledge is power and awareness is key”. But when an experience is added, the purpose of educating becomes more effective. In the same manner, educating users on staying aware of phishing emails or spoofed emails, wouldn’t be enough if they do not experience the real thrill of it. Along with security awareness, it is important for cybersecurity experts to train employees with real-time simulation attacks. Using phishing simulation attacks in security awareness training sessions not only makes employees proactive but also helps in mitigating the cybersecurity threat posture of the organization.
For starters, phishing simulation is a process to test the security practices of employees where they are sent fake emails by the organization that is similar to malicious emails. In a simulated phishing attack, the commonly used email templates are believable and luring in nature. The simulation campaign is either run on all employees or on the targeted group of working individuals in the organization. Emails are used as bait in the phishing simulation campaign because emails are the primary communication channel for organizations and attackers that are well aware of it. Hence, they use emails for a convenient and effective way to launch cyber attacks.
Normally, phishing simulation is done to assess the cyber posture of an organization and to analyze the number of vulnerable employees in the organization. The assessment is done on the basis of the number of employees who clicked on the fake phishing email, opened malicious email attachments or links, and on the number of login credentials submitted. This part of training is done with the view of keeping real phishing attacks and social engineering practices in mind.
According to a survey conducted in the effective phishing campaigns, humans are the weakest link in the cybersecurity chain of an organization. Users usual fall for phishing emails that have a sense of urgency or have clickbait subject lines such as:
- Verify your account!
- Avail your gift cards within 3 hours!
- Click here for a surprise gift!
- Festival offer valid only for today!
What is the Importance of Phishing Simulation in Training Employees?
Before proceeding further to understand the importance of phishing simulation, here are some current challenges with respect to phishing attacks:
- Every day over 100 million phishing messages are sent daily and 18 million malware and phishing emails related to COVID-19 (source: CPO Magazine)
- Coronavirus related phishing emails have been the second most leading social engineering attempts during Q1 of 2020
- 600% growth in coronavirus related phishing emails was seen in the Q1 of 2020
- Almost 38% of users without cybersecurity awareness training fail to recognize phishing emails
- 30% of targeted users open phishing messages
The fact that humans are the weakest link in the cybersecurity chain is truly undeniable and haunting. Currently, the biggest concern of every organization is to eradicate this problem and to turn human resources into the strongest link in the security chain. In order to do so, many organizations have initiated training their employees with security awareness training.
Conducting security awareness training sessions for employees not only helps them to recognize cyberattacks but also makes them proactive in combating prevailing cyber threats. And to make the training more effective, phishing simulation attacks work as the cherry on top!
Phishing simulation is a controlled activity where after launching a real-life dummy attack, a real-time cyber posture of an organization can be assessed. Moreover, nothing teaches better like experience. When employees respond to simulated phishing emails, it becomes easier to help them understand how potentially they can put the organization’s security/confidentiality at risk along with theirs with the analysis report of the simulated reports.
Apart from this, there are the top five benefits that organizations gain by using phishing simulation tools in security awareness training:
- Monitor Results
Phishing simulation helps in monitoring the employee vulnerability level after the attack. By tracking the results of simulated phishing attacks, the organization can use the vulnerability report and progress security awareness training accordingly. Also, it strengthens security awareness training as an additional defense for protection against phishing and other cyber attacks.
2. Improved Cyber Resilience
The simulated phishing campaigns not only reinforce the security awareness training but also helps to improve cyber resilience in the organization. It creates a strong security culture by decreasing the chances of fraudulent activities.
3. Proactive Employees
Just like other cybersecurity tools that help in defending the organization from incoming cyberattacks, a phishing simulation tool helps employees in the organization to understand how phishing attacks work and how genuine-looking emails are crafted to steal the recipient’s information. Also, it makes employees proactive in responding to these malicious emails.
4. A Decrease in Cyber Threats
One of the major benefits of phishing simulation is that it helps in decreasing cyber risks in the organization by empowering employees to recognize the commonly used social engineering practices that involve human manipulation and deception. And once the employees become aware of all possible use cases, they are completely well-versed in spotting a phishing email.
5. Makes Training More Fun
When phishing simulation is based on gamification and assessment, it makes the training more interesting and fun thing to do. With everyone involved in it, a stronger team spirit is cultivated in the team which not only makes the organization a safe workplace but also helps employees in bringing these cybersecurity practices into their daily habits. Also, with in-depth knowledge, this practice is extended to the employee’s personal life too.
Thank you for giving your valuable time to read this blog. Hope you had a good read!
