By itself, the term “phishing training” fails to convey the complexity of creating and maintaining an effective defense against email-borne threats. Yes, it’s important to educate employees on the risks of clicking on malicious links, opening infected attachments or divulging confidential information in an email, but the best phishing training involves much more.

For example, you need processes for reporting phishing or suspicious emails, along with mechanisms to help security teams prioritize reports. Think about it: after employees receive phishing training they’re likely to report more emails. To manage the volume of phishing reports and contain genuine threats, security teams need to know which employees are best at spotting potential threats.

The hardest part of phishing training is building a business culture of openness and awareness. Mistakes happen. When an employee inadvertently responds to a phishing email, it’s smart to educate and correct. If employees feel shamed, they may be reluctant to report errors in the future, denying security teams the chance to contain threats fast. Given the potential consequences of an uncontained threat, phishing training needs to include everyone from the CEO down.

Training Modules Need to Be Comprehensive, Interactive and Relevant

Cybercriminals use many tactics to gather the information needed for phishing attacks. Employees and senior management need to be vigilant. Besides learning how to identify suspicious emails, they must also learn how social engineering attacks are constructed, plus the risks of surfing the web from a mobile device connected to the business´s network.

It’s not enough to be told these things. Employees need to be engaged, as well as assessed and measured, to establish their susceptibility to phishing attacks. The results of phishing training show weaknesses in network defenses. Security teams can use this knowledge to prioritize suspicious email reports. A culture of awareness, and one of action, is the goal.

Relevance counts, too. Lower-level employees need to be aware of phishing email threats, but are unlikely to be targets of a business email compromise attack. It’s vital for phishing training to be customizable—relevant to different user groups and the roles they play in your online defense. Without relevance, users become disinterested and phishing training less effective.

Comprehensive Phishing Training from Cofense

Our phishing training is holistic. Through customizable phishing simulations, your employees will be less susceptible to costly phishing attacks. They can also report and delete suspicious email reports with the click of a button. Incident responders can triage reported emails, prioritize and reduce false positives. Our human-vetted, phishing-specific threat intelligence service further helps security teams work smarter, with better results. The platform integrates seamlessly with existing security information and event management systems. It’s easy to administer and provides deep metrics, benchmarking and reporting options.

Rounding out our phishing training, we offer computer-based modules which you can use as stand-alone instruments or as part of our integrated package. We also host a thriving online community where businesses share their experiences and solutions. Be sure to explore our free videos, webinars and whitepapers with information relevant to all industry sectors.

Request a free demo of Cofense in action. Or contact us with questions about maximizing the effectiveness of your phishing training. Fortify your last line of defense against malware, data loss and ransomware. Cofense has helped our clients achieve a 95% reduction in susceptibility to phishing emails. Is your current phishing training that good? Learn more today!