How do you teach your team to recognize phishing scams?

1 What is phishing and how does it work?

Phishing is a type of social engineering attack that uses fake or spoofed messages to impersonate a legitimate person, organization, or service. The messages often create a sense of urgency, curiosity, or fear to persuade your team to take action, such as entering their credentials, opening an attachment, or following a link. The attackers then use the information they collect to access your systems, steal your data, or launch further attacks.

2 How to spot common phishing indicators?

Your team should be aware of some signs that can help them identify phishing messages and avoid falling for them. These signs include mismatched or misspelled sender names, email addresses, or domain names; unexpected or unsolicited requests for personal or financial information; poor grammar, spelling, or formatting errors; suspicious or shortened links or attachments that do not match the message content or context; inconsistent or unprofessional tone, style, or logo; and pressure or threats to act quickly or face consequences. Being aware of these signs can help your team stay safe online.

3 How to verify the authenticity of a message?

If your team is unsure about the legitimacy of a message, they should not respond, click, or download anything from it. Instead, they should take steps to verify its authenticity. This includes contacting the sender using a different channel, such as phone or official website, and not using the information provided in the message. Additionally, they can check the message headers for the original source and destination of the email, hover over the links or attachments to see the actual URL or file name and type, search for the message content or subject online to see if it is a known phishing scam, and report it to your IT department or security team for further analysis.

4 How to educate your team about phishing?

To ensure your team is well-equipped to recognize phishing scams, it's important to provide them with regular and interactive training and awareness programs. This could include sending out simulated phishing emails to measure their response rate and behavior, providing feedback on how to improve their phishing detection and prevention skills, sharing real-life examples and stories of phishing incidents and their impact, updating them on the latest phishing trends and techniques, and testing their knowledge through quizzes or games.

5 How to create a culture of security awareness?

Teaching your team how to recognize phishing scams is not enough; you must also create a culture of security awareness that encourages your team to follow your organization's security policies and procedures, use strong and unique passwords with multi-factor authentication, avoid public or unsecured Wi-Fi networks or devices, backup their data regularly, keep their software updated, and report any suspicious or unusual activity or incident to your IT department or security team. Establishing these habits is essential for protecting your organization's security and reputation from phishing scams. By teaching your team how to recognize and avoid them, you can reduce the risk of falling victim to them and enhance your security posture.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?