Cloud-based tool simulates social engineering

TraceSecurity launched the TraceSecurity Phishing Simulator, a secure, cloud-based solution that allows organizations to safely perform on-demand social engineering tests that mimic real-world attacks. Results are tracked to analyze employee actions and determine an organization’s social engineering risk.

TraceSecurity expert analysts have conducted hundreds of social engineering engagements, and its Phishing Simulator extends these services through an online tool that takes minutes to identify how vulnerable an organization’s employees are to social engineering attacks.

Many of the most dangerous threats to information security come from human error, and technological controls do little to prevent these careless mistakes. Performing a social engineering test helps organizations identify areas of weakness within an organization’s existing security awareness training initiatives, and allows them to determine the most effective resolutions.

With the Phishing Simulator, organizations can evaluate the effectiveness of existing information security policies, determine how well employees adhere to internal security procedures when presented with a phishing email, assess the level of security awareness among employees, and identify areas for remediation.

Many of the recent Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) exploits, such as the South Carolina Department of Revenue and New York Times breaches, have been suspected to have used phishing as their initial attack vectors to launch large scale attacks. It takes only a single employee to fall victim to these types of cyber threats to put an entire organization at risk.

“Deploying a simulated phishing attack against groups of employees not only tests their willingness to click on an unsolicited email, but also determines if they are apt to download potentially harmful code onto company resources,” said Jim Stickley, TraceSecurity CTO. “Malicious messages often contain malware that, when activated, can easily infect an entire network, which is why we developed Phishing Simulator. We believe every organization should, at a minimum, test a few employees and see how they do.”

Based on TraceSecurity’s research of email-based social engineering simulations, the company found that 30 percent of employees clicked on a link that could be a malicious website that may infect the computer with malware. In addition, the study found that 5 percent of employees manually installed malicious software on their computer that could compromise the network. Phishing simulations are a key risk assessment component to evaluate the awareness and effectiveness of an organization’s security policies.

For more information on self-assessment, read Learn by doing: Phishing and other online tests.