The COVID-19 pandemic has forced businesses to reassess working practices and adapt to a new way of working, where employees no longer come to the office and instead work remotely. With COVID-19 vaccines on the way, businesses will soon be able to return to “a normal workplace.” However, many employees have got used to working from home and enjoy not having to commute and businesses have already put the effort into making sure their workforce can work effectively from home. Many businesses also report that there have been benefits, such as increases in productivity.
Once the pandemic is over it is likely that the normal workplace will be different from how it was before the pandemic. Many businesses have already stated they will adopt a hybrid workplace model, where employees can spend at least some of the week working remotely.
One of the problems with remote working is how to ensure that threats are dealt with effectively. Throughout the pandemic, cybercriminals and nation state hackers have targeted remote workers who are seen as an easy way to gain access to sensitive data and business networks. One of the ways that this is achieved is through phishing attacks.
One recent study, conducted by the security awareness training firm Terranova Security, explored how remote workers performed at detecting phishing emails and compared the results to phishing simulations conducted before the pandemic.
The company hosted a global ‘Gone Phishing Tournament’ with participants from 98 countries taking part over 11 days in October. Simulated phishing emails were sent to employees that mirrored real world phishing scenarios and responses were tracked, including clicks on suspicious links and any information entered into the webpages that users were directed to.
An analysis of the results revealed a significant year-over-year increase in click rates, which in a real-world scenario would mean that their credentials would have been stolen or they would have downloaded malware onto their computers.
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20% of respondents quickly clicked phishing links in emails, compared to 11% before the pandemic. Worryingly, 67% of those who clicked revealed their login credentials on the fake phishing web pages compared to just 2% before the pandemic.
Naturally, the findings show just how important it is to provide ongoing security awareness training to the workforce to condition employees to check for the signs of phishing emails and teach them how to spot scams. They also highlight just how important it is to have an effective anti-spam solution that prevents the vast majority of phishing and scam emails from reaching inboxes where they can easily be clicked without thinking.
TitanHQ can’t help your business train your workforce how to recognize phishing emails and become more security conscious. That requires a commitment to training and phishing simulation exercises. TitanHQ can however help by ensuring phishing emails are not delivered to inboxes where they can attract a click.
TitanHQ developed SpamTitan to protect businesses from phishing and malware attacks via email, even sophisticated email-based attacks. SpamTitan incorporates many layers of protection such as blacklists of known spammers, message header analysis, content analysis, threat intelligence feeds, DMARC and SPF, and a machine learning system that can detect zero-day phishing attacks. Malware protection is provided by dual antivirus engines and sandboxing to identify never-before seen malware threats.
These and other protection mechanisms ensure that 99.97% of threats are detected and blocked, which helps reduce reliance on security awareness training and employees identifying phishing emails.
SpamTitan is an ideal solution for small- to medium-sized businesses and managed service providers serving the SMB market. Contact TitanHQ today to find out more about the solution, how cost-effective SpamTitan is, and how easy the solution is to implement, use, and maintain. Also be sure to check out the customer reviews on Capterra, GetApp and Software Advice, Google Reviews, Expert Insights, and G2 Crowd, where the solution consistently achieves high scores and, in many cases, is the top-rated email security solution.