What is the single largest threat to your cybersecurity?  Phishing.

While your employees are your greatest resource, they also represent your weakest link in defense of ransomware and other successful cyber-attacks.

It’s true, greater than 90% of successful cyber attacks originate from the weakest link in your cyber defense, people.  It’s in our nature to be trusting, and with the amount of emails we all receive on a daily basis, it’s easy to find yourself going through them on autopilot.  This is the exact behavior cybercriminals expect and prey upon.  While empowering employees with technology is possibly our greatest opportunity to increase efficiency, it also perfectly illustrates the fact that we are no longer living in a world where cyber security awareness is solely on the shoulders of the IT department.  Phishing attacks carry enormous risks and consequences to your business and a well-informed staff is your best defense.   

So what’s the big deal?

Ransomware

The cost of recovering from Ransomware attack continues to climb at alarming rates, in fact the average cost more than doubled in 2019 and now stands at $84,116.  With 94% of Ransomware attacks originating from Phishing emails it no longer makes sense to sit back and hope it doesn’t happen to you. 

Brand Damage

Phishing attacks spread like a virus.  Once one person falls victim, attackers take control of their email to continue sending malicious links to all of their contacts.  Receiving a message from a known contact substantially increases the likelihood that a malicious link will be clicked, continuing the exponential spread of the attack.  The brand damage that can come from this is a serious risk.  Imagine your clients, partners and other contacts falling prey to a Ransomware attack that ends up costing them tens of thousands of dollars, and that attack originated from one of your employees.  The damage to your brand and relationships could be permanent. 

Downtime

In a rare but best-case scenario you dodge the Ransomware from a successful phishing attack, you catch it before it spreads to contacts, partners and clients, hooray!  Even in this best-case scenario though, you didn’t escape without a cost.  Your IT provider needs to cleanup and scan for additional threats, using their time or costing you consulting dollars.  Your employee can’t work while their computer is being worked on causing them downtime.  Once they have access to their computer again, they need to go back and reset possibly dozens of passwords to mitigate further risk.  Taking on these risks with a strategy of hope doesn’t make sense when simple training can drastically reduce the likelihood that your business falls prey to a phishing attack. 

Security Awareness Training

The best defense is a good offense, and the best offense is a proactive, well planned security awareness training program.

Studies show a well designed security awareness training program reduces phishing susceptibility by 75%.  At EdgeTek we can attest to this as we routinely see simulation failure rates drop 80-90% with repeated trainings and simulations.  Setting up a training program can be tricky, time consuming and costly though.  Which template to use, when to send emails out and at what frequency, how to keep the messages from being blocked or ending up in spam folders, these are all challenges that can be avoided by allowing our experienced, knowledgeable technicians to design a custom program that fits your business’ needs.  Call us today at (719) 644-6789 to discuss how we can help keep your employees informed and your business safe.