According to a new CyberEdge research survey of 19 sectors, including government, spearphishing is the biggest concern to IT security pros, more worrisome than even malware. And only 20 percent of officials expressed confidence their organizations have invested enough in educating employees how to avoid falling for phishing attacks.
You may know that for months now, the State Department has struggled to keep Russian hackers out of its networks, despite periodic shutdowns of email for maintenance and a massive endeavor to re-issue credentials, according to officials. The White House maintains the intruders did not breach classified material, but CNN reports they had access to sensitive data such as confidential updates on President Barack Obama's schedule.
State even provided an online cyber training course, to train employees to be careful about the personal and professional information they post on social media. Social engineering was the topic of the lecture. One of the subjects covered, according to State's website, was "organizational risk to social engineering through email and social media."
"No one at the White House took the course," White House deputy press secretary Shawn Turner told Nextgov. Well, that will get you hacked!
Kevin and I are giving the White House a second chance, we are offering all their employees to step through our security awareness training...for free
If you want to know what your phishing attack surface is, you can find out at no cost. We will send you your Email Exposure Check (EEC) with all email addresses belonging to your domain that are out there on the Internet for the bad guys to find:
