- KNOWBE4 investigated employees all over the world to measure their confidence to discover phishing
- Many self -assured people have also fallen victim in the past
- Education and transparency is the key to fighting phishing, scientists said
Despite being sure of their ability to spot phishing, many employees are still falling for such scams, new research has claimed.
A report from Knowbe4 warns of “wrongly placed confidence” which can cause even more problems for businesses, which shows that almost everyone (86%) of respondents believes they can safely identify phishing -e emails.
Even more than half (53%) fell victim to a form of social engineering scams: 24% dropped for a phishing attack, 17% were fooled by a social media fraud, and 12% were fooled by a deep phake -scam.
High self -confidence often leads to victim
Employees in South Africa are underway in both the highest levels of confidence and the highest fraud victim (68%), KNOWBE4 explains, suggesting that misplace confidence can create a false sense of security.
At the other end of the spectrum are the British employees who reported the lowest scam (43%). However, this figure is also down 5% compared to 2021, indicating that vulnerability is rising, even in regions with historically high self -confidence levels.
Exercise is important for combating phishing and social engineering, KNOWBE4 says, adding that “promoting a transparent security culture” is equally important. While more than half (56%) of employees feel “very comfortable” reporting of security concerns, 1 out of 10 still hesitate, either by fear or uncertainty.
“The Dunning-Kruger effect, which is a cognitive bias where people overestimate their ability, are alive and good in cyber security,” commented Anna Collard, SVP content strategy and Evangelist at Knowbe4.
“This overronment promotes a dangerous blind spot – employees assume that they are fraudulent when cyber criminals can in fact utilize more than 30 sensitivity factors, including psychological and cognitive parties, situational consciousness holes, behavioral trends and even demographic traits.”
