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“Go Phish!” Ryan Barrett and Forbes discuss the value of hacking your employees
“Go Phish!” The name of an iconic childhood card game takes on a menacing air with the addition of a single letter. But in the same way that you chide a fellow card-player to taking an extra card, possibly to their disadvantage, you can also test your employees’ skills with a carefully planned game of “Go Phish”.
Playing “Go Phish!” with your employees is actually a game where everyone wins. As Intermedia VP of Security and Privacy Ryan Barrett wrote for a recent Forbes piece, “Regular self-imposed and interactive phishing campaigns give employers the opportunity to safely educate employees without risking the loss of valuable information and data.”
Ryan’s advice on conceiving and deploying internal phishing games can be tailored to fit any business in any industry — with or without in-house IT staff. And while it does take some planning and work, the effort is well worth it if even one of your employees learns to recognize and avoid a phishing scam.
Security concerns keep IT up at night
And that’s important because cyber attacks are only getting more prevalent. In fact, our 2016 IT Confidence Index report shows that IT pros are increasingly concerned about security and struggle to protect their companies from attacks. On a scale of 1 to 10, they gave their confidence level in security a measly score of 6.7.
Richard Walters, our SVP of Security Products, spells it out plainly:
“As this Index signifies, companies are feeling the fallout of phishing and malware, which can lead to data loss and ransomware attacks (causing businesses to be taken offline for days unless they decide to cough up the ransom.) These continually growing threats have shaken the confidence of IT as they work to keep their organizations’ protected. Education is the first step to combating cyber threats. Equally important, however, is putting the tools in place to protect company data, including having access to clean versions of infected files in the event of a ransomware attack so businesses can remain up and running as usual.”
So anything you can do to educate your employees will go a long way in staving off an attack.
Learn how to phish your own employees
You can get all of Ryan’s advice by reading the full article, “Go Phish! Why Every Company Should Hack Its Own Employees.”
And couple that great employee training with strong email security. Check out Intermedia’s Advanced Email Security service, included with every new Exchange mailbox. And if you have any questions, feel free to give us a call at 800-379-7729.
