The Los Angeles Times is reporting that new research from the State University of North Carolina shows that people are easily deceived by targeted emails. The researchers found that although people were aware of how spearphishing worked and confident in their abilities to avoid deception, people were, nevertheless, deceived. Before taking the test, 89% of the subjects said they were confident that they could spot spearphishing emails. When put to the test, just 4 of the 53 subjects were able to correctly spot the spearphishing messages. More than half of the test subjects missed more than half of the fake messages.
The same article cites research from Proofpoint which found that users were ten times more likely to click on links in fake Walmart emails than links in real Walmart emails.
The article reports that the researchers at the State University of North Carolina are working on creating a training program to fight spearphishing. One wonders if such efforts aren’t exalting hope over experience in light of prior research such as the Carronade experiments at West Point. In our whitepaper, Phishing Training – A Losing Cyberwar Strategy, we discuss this topic in detail.
The importance of defending against cyber attacks cannot be overstated. Training might provide some benefits. However, many layers of defense must be used to defend against cyber attack. SP Guard is an important layer in that defense — helping employees avoid spearphishing attacks in email. Using SP Guard, IT can determine a list of trusted senders and provide this information to staff in a simple and highly effective manner.
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