Security awareness training has always been an essential tool for businesses to protect against phishing attacks. These attacks target employees and attempt to steal private information and credentials. They often pose as some authority figure, a vendor, or a client to gain the trust of the employee in question.
How Security Awareness Training Protects Businesses
Phishing attacks rely on human errors in judgment to steal information successfully. There are many tools for screening emails and other traffic before they reach employees, but phishing attacks are continually evolving.
There is always a chance that a phishing attack can reach an employee and that the employee will divulge confidential information. Training employees to be aware of proper security procedures for personal information can mitigate this risk.
Training instills in employees proper “information conduct” to prevent data and personal information from falling into the wrong hands. It’s essential that employees can identify the signs of phishing attacks and take the appropriate steps.
Remote Work Has Increased Phishing Opportunities
With more people working from home, digital correspondence plays a more significant role in most business operations than ever. This means that more matters are handled via email and other prime vectors for phishing attacks.
Growing acceptance of remote work arrangements leads employees to divulge information more readily. They are less likely now to identify a phishing attempt because the domain of reasonable requests for information through email has been expanded.
Fewer Accessible Routes to Verification
When businesses operated strictly within their offices, it was easy for employees to verify if a request for information was legitimate. If they received an odd email from their boss or supervisor, they could walk over to their desk and ask them about it.
Today, these requests would require calling or other methods to verify. Most phishing attempts preempt this and state that the matter is urgent and that a call would be unwelcome. This type of pressure is highly effective at gathering information from employees.
Compromised Devices
Phishing attacks often spoof emails, and there are varying degrees of complexity that can be more or less convincing. However, remote work setups open the door to unauthorized access to legitimate company email accounts.
If an employee’s device is lost or stolen, you can use it to infiltrate the remote work network if multi-factor authentication isn’t used. This means phishing attacks can come from the authentic email account of a co-worker, and employees will require more intensive security awareness training to identify these cunning attacks.
Other Unauthorized Network Access
Allowing for remote work means opening the business’s network to external connections. There are many security features in place, but they could be compromised. When this happens, phishing attacks can bear the same valid credentials as if they had stolen a physical device.
Evaluating the effectiveness of security awareness training entails using a phishing awareness test. The test determines how employees really respond to an email that bears the telltale signs of a phishing attack.
Convergent Can Help
A phishing awareness test can be a great first step in security awareness training for your company. Convergent has highly trained IT experts who can handle all your IT needs for you, so you can focus on your business. Download our step-by-step infographic on implementing a phishing awareness test. Learn how Convergent can get your business better prepared for the rapidly evolving remote work environment.
