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FIRESIDE CHAT: Timely employee training, targeted testing needed to quell non-stop phishing

Humans are rather easily duped. And this is the fundamental reason phishing persists as a predominant cybercriminal activity.

Related: How MSSPs help secure business networks

Tricking someone into clicking to a faked landing page and typing in their personal information has become an ingrained pitfall of digital commerce.

The deleterious impact on large enterprises and small businesses alike has been – and continues to be — profound. A recent survey of 250 IT and security professionals conducted by Osterman Research for Ironscales bears this out.

The poll found that security teams are spending one-third of their time handling phishing threats every week. The battle has sprawled out beyond email; phishing ruses are increasingly getting seeded via messaging apps, cloud-based file sharing platforms and text messaging services.

Guest expert: Ian Thomas, VP of Product Marketing, Ironscales

Some 80 percent of organizations reported that phishing attacks have  worsened or remained the same over the past 12 months, with detection avoidance mechanisms getting ever more sophisticated.

I had the chance to visit with Ian Thomas, vice president of product marketing at  Ironscales, an Atlanta-based email security company.

We discussed advances in cybersecurity training that combine timely content and targeted training to combat the latest phishing campaigns. For a full drill down, please give the accompanying podcast a listen.

Timely, effective security training of all employees clearly must continue to be part of the regimen of defending modern business networks, even more so as cloud migration accelerates. I’ll keep watch and keep reporting.

Acohido

Pulitzer Prize-winning business journalist Byron V. Acohido is dedicated to fostering public awareness about how to make the Internet as private and secure as it ought to be.


(LW provides consulting services to the vendors we cover.)

 

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from The Last Watchdog authored by bacohido. Read the original post at: https://www.lastwatchdog.com/fireside-chat-timely-employee-training-targeted-testing-needed-to-quell-non-stop-phishing/