Human Error When Handling Email Can Lead to Disaster
One Mishandled Email Can Spell Disaster
The biggest cybersecurity threat to your business never changes. Human error is the biggest cybersecurity risk that businesses of any size face every day. It’s responsible for an estimated 90% of data breaches. Cybercriminals know that, and they’re doing everything in their power to force an error by using psychology and social engineering to fool employees into interacting with their poisonous messages. Whether they’re giving their password to phishermen or opening up ransomware-laced PDFs, employees are the weakest link in your cybersecurity plan – especially when it comes to phishing.
Training Only Treats Part of the Problem
Increased security awareness and phishing resistance training helps companies have 70% fewer cybersecurity incidents, but training alone won’t solve the problem. In a recent survey, 78% of U.S. respondents said that they’ve had security awareness training in the last 12 months, but yet 60% still opened emails they considered to be suspicious. The stream of email to employees is never-ending, especially since email is the most used communication tool for remote workers. Unfortunately, that means never-ending possibilities for trouble, since sophisticated phishing messages are also passing right through conventional security. SEE HOW YOUR EMAIL SECURITY STACKS UP TO GRAPHUS=>
Why on earth are they opening email they suspect is bogus? Even trained employees will still have a bad day or get distracted long enough to make that fatal click. In the same survey, researchers discovered that although 96% of employees are aware of digital threats, 45% of them click emails they consider to be suspicious “just in case it’s important” — and that 45% of clickers also don’t report suspicious messages to IT for review.
Employees are also filled with self-confidence about judging the safety of emails, but they don’t trust anyone else. In a cybersecurity threat awareness survey, 92% of employees said that they feel at least moderately confident in their ability to sniff out a fake email. But in the same survey, only 84% felt that their colleagues could do that too. It’s not just older workers who are clicking on suspicious messages either — 60 % of surveyed employees in the 16-24 age group admitted to opening dodgy emails.
Cybercriminals Can Engineer Clicks from People
Attackers also go deeper into social engineering than many IT professionals may think. Like businesses, cybercriminals are also analyzing their email send metrics to find the perfect combination. Bad actors aren’t not just modifying content to lure unwary clicks and jockeying subject lines to slip past SEGs. They’re also carefully choosing the date and time of each send to maximize the chance that they’ll get a click from an unwary employee who needs more coffee or is distracted by children. SEE 5 WAYS THAT GRAPHUS BEATS SEGs=>
This data makes it clear that even trained, savvy employees aren’t going to handle email carefully. Anything that involves humans also involves human error. The best way to prevent human mishandling of email from becoming a problem is to keep potentially suspicious messages away from humans – and the best way of doing that is an AI-powered, automated guardian like Graphus.
Graphus Can’t Be Fooled by Social Engineering
TrustGraph is the star of the show when it comes to keeping potentially dangerous email away from staffers. Your first layer of defense against phishing, TrustGraph uses more than 50 separate data points to analyze incoming messages completely before allowing them to pass into employee inboxes. TrustGraph also learns from each analysis it completes, adding that information to its knowledge base to continually refine your protection and keep learning without human intervention. SEE OUR 3 SHIELDS EXPLAINED IN AN INFOGRAPHIC=>
Plus, Graphus makes it easy for your employees to report suspicious messages and get help in case of trouble. EmployeeShield adds a bright, noticeable box to messages that could be dangerous, empowering staffers to report that message with one click for administrator inspection. Phish911 completes the shield by making it a snap for employees to report any suspicious message that they receive. When an employee reports a problem, the email in question isn’t just removed from that employee’s inbox — it is removed from everyone’s inbox and automatically quarantined for administrator review.
Nothing that involves humans will ever be free of the danger of human error. Keep humans out of the picture with Graphus. Schedule a demo today=>
