KnowBe4 - Positive Technologies Social Engineering Report: 17 Percent Fall Foul To “Attacks”

Employees download malicious files, click phishing links, correspond with hackers, and even share contact information for their colleagues.

Positive Technologies has released a new report Social Engineering: How the Human Factor Puts Your Company at Risk, with statistics on the success rates of social engineering attacks, based on the 10 largest and most illustrative pentesting projects performed for clients in 2016 and 2017.

To verify the security of corporate systems, Positive Technologies testers imitated the actions of hackers by sending emails to employees with links to websites, password entry forms, and attachments. In total, 3,332 messages were sent. If the “attacks” had been real, 17 percent of these messages would have led to a compromise of the employee’s workstation and, ultimately, the entire corporate infrastructure.

from KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training Blog https://blog.knowbe4.com/positive-technologies-social-engineering-report-17-percent-fall-foul-to-attacks