Over time, phishing attacks have become increasingly sophisticated. Thanks to public information campaigns on television, more people have become aware of the threats and know what to look out for after receiving messages from uncertain sources. However, criminals are also constantly adapting their attack methods to changing circumstances, and many people still fall victim to these types of attacks, losing confidential or private data, and even their savings. The matter is even more serious when we talk about phishing attacks on companies that hold confidential data of their customers in their databases. How is it possible that companies still fall victim to such attacks?
Lack of Employee Security Training
Training employees is a cost to the company. Therefore, in the name of saving money, it turns out that business owners are abandoning training their employees in the field of cyber-security. Untrained employees do not know how to avoid ever-new security threats. Without proper training, they may not realise how serious a threat phishing can be to the company, how to detect it, and how to protect themselves against it. A lack of employee training can end in disaster for the enterprise and cause the company many problems, including legal ones. Training is essential to know how to recognise a phishing message in the first place.
As long as business owners ignore the problem of a lack of employee training, companies will continue to fall victim to phishing attacks. The cost incurred for training in cyber-crime can pay for itself in the future, and ignoring this type of threat can come back to haunt them.
The problem affects small companies to an even greater extent than large enterprises, as large companies can usually allocate more funds for training, because the cost per employee for such training will be lower than in small firms with a few or a dozen employees. Furthermore, the IT infrastructure of large companies is generally much better protected against cyber-attacks than in small businesses.
Money
Cyber-criminals make money from phishing attacks. Often, large sums of money. Obtaining confidential data, for example, login details for banking websites, from unsuspecting employees is much easier than hacking directly into the banks’ websites. That is why, despite the passage of time, phishing attacks are still going strong. New, ever more sophisticated methods of phishing attacks are constantly emerging.
Cyber-criminals are often able to invest considerable funds in purchasing software and hardware to carry out these types of attacks. This, combined with the unawareness of untrained company employees, means that tens of thousands of data-phishing sites are detected each year. According to The Anti-Phishing Working Group, over a million phishing attacks were detected in the first quarter of 2022. In March 2022, over 384,000 data-phishing sites were discovered. This is a really serious problem for private individuals and an even bigger problem for companies.
Careless Employees
Sometimes it is not the company itself that is responsible for falling victim to phishing, but the carelessness and negligence of individual employees, even despite appropriate training being conducted. Clicking on links and entering confidential data on websites without thinking can result in the leakage of login data. Any employee with access to websites at work can fall victim to phishing.
Easy Access to Software for Criminals
In the past, only a handful of hackers in the world had the skills to write software to carry out effective phishing attacks. Today, in the age of the ubiquitous internet, with the right amount of cash, criminals are able to easily acquire professional tools and software to carry out phishing attacks. That is why the number of these attacks is growing year on year.
Companies Are Looking for Savings
Recent years, 2020-2022 (the coronavirus pandemic, high energy prices), have not been easy for entrepreneurs. It is no wonder, then, that companies looking for savings are tightening their belts and giving up on employee training. However, saving on a company’s cyber-security can come back to haunt them in the future.
Summary
The problem of phishing attacks, especially on companies, is growing year on year, and their methods are becoming more and more sophisticated. Therefore, taking care of the security of company data and the confidential data of our clients is extremely important. That is why professional training for office employees in the field of security is extremely important. Such training is offered by many companies, such as Network Masters or Securitum, both online and in-person. It is also extremely important to properly secure our company’s IT infrastructure itself. A good quality firewall can automatically detect and block many types of attacks on our company’s computer systems, including phishing.
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