Why Minimizing Human Error is the Only Viable Defense Against Spear Phishing

Phishing attacks have become one of the business world’s top cybersecurity concerns. These social engineering attacks have been rising over the years, with the most recent report from the Anti-Phishing Working Group coalition identifying over 266,000 active spoofed websites, which is nearly double the number detected during Q4 2018.

Hackers have evolved their methods, from regular phishing attacks to spear phishing, where they use email messages disguised as coming from legitimate sources to dupe specific individuals.

This is why the global spear phishing protection software market is estimated to reach $1.8 billion by 2025.

However, conventional defenses can still fall short due to one particular weakness in the security perimeter – the human factor. Indeed, some 33 percent of 2019’s data breaches involved humans falling victim to social engineering attacks. And given how sophisticated and creative the phishing perpetrators have been getting, it’s easy to see how even the most tech-savvy among us can become victims.

“Typically, information security departments have two problems: technology and human factors,” says Mika Aalto, the CEO of phishing training software company <a href="https://www.hoxhunt.com/"…