Most organizations unafraid of phishing

ThreatSim released its 2013 State of the Phish Awareness Index, gauging phishing training, awareness and readiness among 300 IT executives, administrators and professionals in organizations throughout the United States.

The key finding: most organizations (57%) rate phishing as a “minimal’ impact threat (resulting in investigation and account resets), while one in four respondents (27%) reported phishing attacks that led to a “material’ breach within the last year.

The survey defined “material’ as some form of malware infection, unauthorized access and lost/stolen data from a breach tied to phishing.

Another interesting finding is that sixty percent (60%) of all respondents reported phishing attacks targeting their organization were increasing each year; yet the majority of organizations are doing nothing to implement phishing training and awareness programs (25%), or utilizing ineffective techniques, including email notifications, webinars and in-person training (69%).

The onslaught of continuous headlines show phishing effectiveness is alive and well as one of the most active, growing and consistent threat vectors, and State of the Phish findings show most organizations are still not proactive or taking an effective stance to train end users on how not to get phished.

Other key findings from the index include:

• 30% of all respondents plan to increase budget security training and awareness in 2014.
• 70% of all respondents reported not measuring their organization’s exposure to phishing.
• 60% of all respondents see the rate of phishing increasing each year, but only 30 percent are measuring their exposure to the threat.
• Out-of-date 3rd party software on desktops should be viewed as another critical threat vector. The index found 44% of all respondents are not formally managing 3rd party software, representing a weakness in organizational ability to prevent damage associated with phishing attacks.