BayNews 9 in Tampa Bay, Florida interviewed Margie Manning of Tampa Bay Business Journal about cybercrime on the internet and she features KnowBe4 and our Phishing Security Test! Check it out!
Cyberheists cost $500 million in 2010 and the numbers keep going up. Phishing remains a huge problem for individuals and businesses alike. The so called threat landscape continues to expand and become more sophisticated. The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) just released their most recent Internet Crime Report with some more interesting statistics for 2010. Some of the highlights are:
- The IC3 fielded it's second highes number of complaints in 10 years. The 2 millionth complaint was filed in 2010
- Leading complaints were: non-delivery of payment (from sellers) and merchandise (from buyers), scams impersonating the FBI, and identity theft
- IC3 analysts prepared 1,420 cases covering 42,808 complaints
- California had the highest percentage of complaints at 13.7%, followed by Florida at 7.9%
Once hackers get in they can steal valuable private business information such as intellectual property, password access, and they can even clean out business bank accounts, here are some more details on their process and how exactly they are able to get away with it.
There is a lot of protection software on the market but 100,000 varieties of malicious software being developed every day. No amount of protective software or hardware will ever be enough to stop all attacks. According to a security intelligence report published by Microsoft just two days ago, rogue security software was detected and blocked on almost 19 million systems in 2010. Adware when surfing websites increased 70% from the second quarter to the fourth quarter of 2010. Phishing using social networking increased 1,200% from 8.3% in January to 84.5% in December.
She mentions our FAIL500 test in which we sent simulated phishing emails to Inc5000 companies in Florida. Around 15% of those employees clicked on a link they shouldn't have. If those were real phishing links the results would have been disastrous. We found that the top five industries with the highest phish-prone percentages were Travel 25%, Education 23%, Financial 22%, Government Services 21%, and IT Services (they should know better!). No industry and no individual company is immune to phishing attacks no matter how big or small.
It is good to know our government is taking cybercrime seriously and making efforts to regularly keep the public informed about ongoing cyber security threats. The Cyber Security Public Awareness Act of 2011 bill, if passed, will require government agencies (Department of Homeland Security, DoD, Attorney General, FBI, and SEC, among others) to submit annual (several of them unclassified) reports to Congress outlining the present scope of cybercrime.
KnowBe4 security awareness training teaches employees not to click on phishing emails and links which is exactly how the hackers get in. We send an initial simulated test to determine the phish prone percentage of your organization. That is followed by stepping all end-users through our training, then running more simulated phishing attacks periodically to keep users on their toes.
Protect your organization today, see how many of your employees are phish prone!
