Did you know that an incredible 98% of cyberattacks involve some form of social engineering?
With that in mind, it’s no wonder that 74% of Chief Information Security Officers consider human error to be their greatest vulnerability.
But this isn’t some depressing blog post — there is no reason for it to be that way. Not when you can take valuable steps to prevent social engineering tactics.
Apart from cybersecurity technology and an authentication solutions suite such as IPification, employee education and raising cybersecurity awareness across your organization are the most effective tactics to prevent the human error factor.
Now, the cybersecurity topic is seemingly unending, but we can pinpoint the few major aspects that you need to cover, mostly because they happen so often: phishing and SIM swapping under the umbrella of social engineering, and passwords and authentication protocols.
Without further ado, let’s dive into the key points you should go over in your employee cybersecurity training.
Spotting and Avoiding Phishing
The most popular fraud strategy and the fraud strategy most feared by cybersecurity officers is phishing with a new phishing website getting created every 11 seconds.
It’s been around for a while now: so much so that you may be asking yourself how it is still such a threat to businesses today. And the answer lies in its increased sophistication.
Just like anything else, phishing has matured so these attacks become smarter and the websites more convincing, thereby easily tricking employees into compromising sensitive data.
Then there is the development of readily available artificial intelligence that has enabled cybercriminals to create ever-so-persuasive phishing websites, and that at scale.
Because this isn’t likely to go away, it’s important to provide regular training to employees, teaching them to spot modern phishing attacks, as well as what they should do when they believe they have been targeted by or fallen victim to one.
In addition to education, companies should also consider utilizing cybersecurity technologies to cut down on phishing attacks. The best way to go about this would be to add additional authentication solutions to your stack — with a focus on phishing-resistant solutions such as IPification or biometrics.
With IPification, users are verified through their unique Mobile ID key so there is nothing to phish. Instead, the Mobile ID key is comprised of the phone number, device, and network data.
The same goes for biometrics — albeit these solutions come with some privacy concerns.
SIM Swapping Awareness and Prevention
The rising star of cybercrime, SIM swapping attacks have increased by 400% just in the last year. And when you hear that 80% of all SIM swapping attacks are successful, this fraud strategy climbs up the priority ladder in your cybersecurity curriculum.
Let’s clear this up right away: the only way to proactively protect your accounts from SIM swapping is to use authentication solutions other than SMS OTPs. That’s where SIM swapping is super effective.
To build on that, it’s a great idea to integrate a solution such as IPification SIM Swap Detection, capable of detecting new SIM cards and then giving you the power to stop any authorization requests until the user confirms they’re using a new SIM card — thus preventing any damage.
On the other hand, you should definitely educate your employees on the ways to recognize that their SIM has been swapped and equally as important, what they should do if that occurs.
Some signals that you should tell your employees about include the loss of phone service, receiving odd notifications, getting locked out of their accounts, and of course, unapproved transactions.
Any sudden loss of phone service could mean your SIM card has been deactivated. In these cases, make sure you reach out to your provider. Usually, when this happens, you may receive notifications about the changes to your phone service, so be on the lookout for those.
Finally, getting locked out of your accounts, especially fintech or mBanking accounts, along with any unapproved transactions going out, are huge red flags, even beyond SIM swapping.
Securing Accounts with Authentication
Cybersecurity and authentication technology are crucial, but educating your employees on how these methods work within your company and the importance of using them responsibly might be even more essential.
This is especially true as far as passwords go. You’re almost definitely using them, and as you know, the user experience is less than ideal. That’s why users cut corners.
Did you know that on average, business users have to authenticate ten times each day to access business apps, data, and IT services required for them to complete their tasks?
Then we end up with 54% of people reusing the same password for some of their accounts while 1 in 8 US adults use the same password for every single account.
To avoid this result, it’s crucial that your employees be taught about the best password practices, and it should be mandated company-wide to switch on any additional authentication factors.
Furthermore, we also advise switching your secondary authentication method or adding a tertiary authentication method to your stack. The general rule of thumb to follow here is the more secure and the better the user experience is, the more likely the system is to actually work and protect your organization.
Solutions such as IPification were developed to uphold both bank-grade security and a frictionless user experience. We believe it’s possible to have both today, and users deserve it.
IPification works by assigning each user with a unique Mobile ID key made up of a SIM card, device, and network data. To verify their identities, they only need to input their phone numbers and click once, and IPification works perfectly as part of a multi-factor authentication system.
In this case, the cybersecurity technology would do just what it was designed to do: protect users from themselves by removing them from the authentication process.
Be that as it may, it can be somewhat challenging to develop a multi-factor authentication system from scratch. Each mobile app comes with its own variables so cases differ.
But that’s what we’re here for: we provide free consultations where we analyze your current setup and together think of the best direction to take.
