In honor of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (CSAM), Dane Boyd, PhishLabs' Security Training Manager, and I will share a series of posts covering topics from cybersecurity to organizational learning and development. We are kicking off the series by covering a topic near and dear to my heart: taking a programmatic approach to implementing a security training program. A fatal flaw...

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...

If you have ever worked for an organization that uses Microsoft-based systems, there is a high likelihood that your IT or security team has implemented a policy that occasionally forces you to create a new password. Years ago it was every three months, then every two, and so on. This policy was heavily encouraged by Microsoft, but as of May of this year, they have reversed course. According to...

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...

Recently, our Director of Product Management, Cary Hudgins, discussed how to develop a digital risk protection plan for the modern enterprise. One of the many reasons why such a plan should be created is because, in today's world, an enterprise organization's digital footprint can be vast and will continue to grow. Take for example the average employee who receives an average of 90 emails per...

Taking Advantage of Our Tendency to Simplify There's an old joke floating around the Internet that claims NASA, upon discovering that standard ballpoint pens would not work in space, invested millions of dollars and years of R&D. The resulting pen was supposedly capable of writing in zero-G, on any surface, and in temperatures that would surely kill any astronaut. When confronted with the same...

In May of 2018, we reported on three Romanian threat actors who were extradited to the U.S. for their involvement in a SMiShing and Vishing fraud scheme. At the time of reporting, the expected losses were listed around $18 million but have since risen to more than $21 million. Between July 12 and October 31, 2011, PhishLabs' analysts detected a number of telephone phishing (known as vishing)...

It's time to take action against phish! Phishing attacks are no longer few and far between, they are the norm. Regardless of your company's investments in filtering technologies and countermeasures, suspicious and malicious emails make it into employee inboxes. It only takes one to cost your company time, money, and lost reputation. Unfortunately, even with traditional security awareness...

We've previously reported on how, due to the rise in phishing attempts leveraging SSL certificates, the icon in your web browser gives your users a false sense of security. The threat, however, doesn't end with your web browser. Although first observed as early as 2016, PhishLabs analysts have observed a dramatic uptick in the imitation of flags, banners, and other markup used by applications...

You are affected by social engineering tactics every day. Okay, let me explain. From an information security standpoint, Wikipedia says that social engineering is the psychological manipulation of people into performing actions or divulging confidential information[1]. That's true, but social engineering isn't limited to information security; it's something we all experience, every day. In...

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...

It happens on a daily basis, it's even likely that at some point it happened to you: social media account takeovers. A quick Google search shows a new batch of celebrities, politicians, companies, and other high profile users becoming the victim of account takeovers on a weekly basis. It's concerning, it can cause a ruckus, and depending on what happened after the fact it can even cause damage...