- Knowbe4 surveyed employees around the world to measure their confidence in phishing detection
- Many safe people have also been victims in the past
- Education and transparency are key to combating phishing, the researchers said
Despite having confidence in their ability to detect phishing, many employees still fall in love with such scams, has affirmed new research.
A Knowbe4 report warns of “confidence out of place” that can cause even more problems for companies, showing that almost all (86%) of respondents believe that Phishing’s electronic emails can be confident.
However, more than half (53%) were victims of some form of social engineering scams: 24% fell for a Phishing attack, a social media scam cheated 17% and a scam on social networks was deceived by a defake scam.
High confidence often leads to victimization
Employees in South Africa lead the way both at the highest levels of trust and in the highest scam victimization rate (68%), explains Knowbe4, insinuating that the confidence of the bad collection can create a false sense of security.
At the other end of the spectrum are the employees of the United Kingdom, who reported the lowest victim rate (43%). However, this figure has also dropped 5% compared to 2021, indicating that vulnerability is increasing even in regions with historically high levels of trust.
The training is essential to combat phishing and social engineering, says Knowbe4, and adds that “promoting a transparent security culture” is equally important. While more than half (56%) of employees feel “very comfortable” that report security concerns, 1 in 10 still doubts, either for fear or uncertainty.
“The Dunning-Kruger effect, which is a cognitive bias where people overestimate their capacity, is alive and well in cybersecurity,” said Anna Collard, SVP Content Strategy & Evangelist in Knowbe4.
“This excess of confidence encourages a dangerous blind spot: employees assume that they are scammers who, in reality, cyberbinals can exploit more than 30 susceptibility factors, including psychological and cognitive biases, situational consciousness gaps, behavioral tendencies and even demographic features.”
