On a daily basis, around 42% of the global population, or 3.2 billion people, uses some form of social media. Of that number, people spend a daily average of 2.2 hours on these networks, too. These two numbers are exactly why threat actors continue to flock to social media to abuse them for phishing purposes; however, there is far more to this story. Phishing threats extend well beyond Twitter,...

Today, social media is a daily medium for communication for much of the modern world, and adoption only continues to grow. Because of this, much like how threat actors started to target mobile users, they have begun to abuse social media, too. While marketing teams have been known to monitor social media to protect their brand and communicate on their behalf, they are not equipped to handle...

As the manager of a security awareness team, whose primary goal is to educate users on how to spot phishing attacks, I often get asked, “can you make the phishing simulations look like real-world phish?" This is when I show people what real-world phishing attacks look like. Because our SOC analyzes millions of phishing emails each year, we have a great data set to choose from. Outside of...

Although computer-based training has been on the scene for over two decades, it is only recently that learning professionals have begun to optimize it. Often these courses present hours of content in a single learning experience. While the flexibility of computer-based training offers convenience, learners are often overloaded and overwhelmed by the amount of information presented to them. ...

In the cyber security world, few research reports are more widely respected than Verizon's annual Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR). The DBIR—which is based on data from publicly disclosed security incidents, Verizon's Threat Research Advisory Center, and dozens of industry contributors—is one of the most detailed and comprehensive reports available to the security community. So when...

The risk of a user receiving a phishing attack is higher than ever, and technological solutions often miss the most devastating of them. Though technology is both an important and required component in protecting the enterprise, security teams need to remain vigilant and educated on quickly identifying threats which make it past technology. This includes the latest social engineering...

There are all sorts of things that end up in your inbox, but among those that are reported to a SOC or security team, malicious content only makes up a small percent. Among the analysis provided in this year's annual Phishing Trends and Intelligence (PTI) report, we added a new section based on data from our Phishing Incident Response team. The data analysis resulted in a detailed breakdown of...

Phishing attacks are supposed to be visible. If you can't see them, how could anyone possibly fall for them? Since the dawning of time for phishing attacks there has been a constant struggle between the threat actors creating phishing sites and the individuals and organizations combating them. This has caused phishing attacks to evolve in to more complicated and stealthy traps over time....

Healthcare data breaches are among the most costly of any industry, and phishing attacks are the number one cause. Security technologies, while essential, are not enough to mitigate the threat posed by phishing. Over 90 percent of data breaches contain a phishing component, and the average cost to remediate a data breach is $3.86 million. However, the silver lining is that with an effective...

This month the largest recorded data dump in history, 87GB filled with passwords and user credentials, was made available. Dubbed Collection #1 consists of 1,160,253,228 unique combinations of email addresses and passwords. Though historic, there are two positive notes regarding this information: The first is that this data set was circulated on hacking forums back in December of 2018 and is...

Phishing simulations come with a range of emotions for the users who interact with them. Some will simply ignore them, others may fail by clicking on a link or attachment, and for the well-trained, they may even report them. Even if there is a negative outcome, training leads and organizations should not be worried, yet. Just like in school, these simulations are just that, simulations or...

The most likely way that you will be compromised online is through a simple phish or a socially engineered attack. Today, these two techniques are often combined to create an even more threatening attack, an intelligently targeted phish. Thanks to the wealth of information that we all leave behind us as we use the Internet, it is easier than ever for a social engineer to learn our name,...

Let's be honest, employees make mistakes. And sometimes those mistakes have catastrophic consequences. Everybody has heard stories about people accidentally leaving an unencrypted work laptop on the train, or on the seat of their car. Heck, on a busy day we could even imagine ourselves doing it. But with industry regulators finally starting to find their teeth — and the GDPR is now in full...

So here it is… the first one you've received. Everything has been building up to this. You spent days preparing the business case, weeks designing the training program… and it's finally paid off. The first user-reported phishing email has hit your inbox. Now… what should you do with it? Time is of the Essence Reported phishing emails are good for a lot of reasons. For starters, they can...

You receive an email, you are unfamiliar with the sender's name or email address, and they are offering you a new service or deal on something. Is it malicious? Not necessarily. Perhaps you forgot about signing up for a newsletter a while back. Malicious Versus Benign According to Symantec, 55.5 percent of business emails are considered spam emails, with the average business account getting...

The push for more widespread adoption of HTTPS has been in full-force this year as a way to increase the number of websites that securely transmit information on the Internet. In January, both Chrome and Firefox browsers began alerting users whenever sensitive information, such as passwords or credit card information, was entered on a non-HTTPS web page. In October, Google took this a step...

'Tis the season for shopping, time spent with friends and family, and preparations to celebrate the holidays. As most of us plan for the coming season, cyber criminals are looking for opportunities to catch victims off guard and steal valuable personal information. People looking to supplement their gift-giving budget with a seasonal holiday job should take a close look at job listings before...