Europeans have become more susceptible to phishing. This is according to a study by KnowBe4. According to the figures, much of the solution lies in training employees on digital threats.
From the Phish-prone Percentage of KnowBe4’s latest survey, Europeans are three percent more likely to fall for the tricks of phishing emails. This figure only includes Europeans who never took security awareness training. Overall, 32.9 percent of this group click on a link in a phishing email.
12.5 million people participated in the survey. The dataset thus acquires information from 35681 organizations worldwide. No exact numbers were given about the proportion of European employees.
Importance of training
The report “2023 Phishing by Industry Benchmarking Report” divides participants who never receive training from employees who participate in a training program for 90 days and those who have been at it for over a year. The study aims to demonstrate the importance of security awareness training.
The study shows that training does work and can present a downward trend in the number of employees who still fall for a phishing email after training. After 90 days of training, 19.4 percent still click on a link from such an e-mail. After one year of regularly receiving fake phishing messages for training, the percentage drops to 6.8 percent.
Phishing remains a trick that hackers regularly employ. Hackers are creative and are aware of the phishing signals security awareness training teaches. For example, researchers recently saw the emergence of QR codes in phishing emails. Additionally, KnowBe4’s research shows that a portion of recipients of a malicious email still clicks on the link. Phishing therefore remains an interesting tool that is easy to deploy.
Also read: Chinese phishing campaign targets European government entities – Techzine Europe