IT, Cybersecurity and Compliance Solutions in Washington and Oregon

Quadrupled Cyber Threat vs Security Awareness Training

Written by Byron Martin | May 8, 2020

I had a couple statistics that I was looking at last week, and they kind of blew my mind, so I thought I'd share them with you.

So first is a report out of the UK says 2/3 of employees do not receive any sort of cyber security awareness training. (Source: PrevSec Report) That doesn't really surprise me but it sets the stage because the FBI is reporting that reported attacks and breaches have quadrupled in the last month. Not good, not good. And the other thing is in the midst of this pandemic, they are also reporting that there are multiple significant phishing campaigns and attacks to try to trap or ensnare unsuspecting users.

 

Now the stat that I saw that gave me pause is that it said 667% increase in March of these type of attacks. (Source: Barracuda Networks) Wow, that's a big number. So the scary thing is that they're COVID themed, coronavirus themed, N-95 masks, raising funds. We've seen this in other disasters in other times, but during the pandemic and a lot of people have more free time and they're surfing, or they're work-from-home and may not have the same security at home as they do at the office, or may not be paying attention.

 

There's some really scary things about some security there. So the increase in cyber threat and the amount of people getting actual awareness training on security and what to watch out for, a stat that I know about from some time ago shows that 30% employees fail a cyber phishing test. So those are big numbers, and all it takes is one user to click on something to take out the whole organization. Regardless of how big or small you are, it can have significant impact. So do your due diligence. There's a lot of free, easy, or inexpensive cyber security awareness training programs. Do something, that's all I'm saying because the alternate is not fun, not pretty. 

Teknologize has offices located in the Tri-Cities, Washington, 509-396-6640 and Bend, Oregon 541.848.6072.