Almost Half of SMB Executives Believe Employees Can’t Recognize Phishing

Some 82% of executives of SMBs (small to medium businesses) know that employees will use their work computers and phones to shop online, and 61% of senior managers admit it elevates the cybersecurity risks in their companies.

The shopping season is a prime delivery period for spam, and it’s especially lucrative for criminals trying to steal private and financial information through social engineering (phishing) campaigns. Their attempts can go even further and attach malware files to emails or embed them in websites.

The Zix | AppRiver Cyberthreat Index for Business survey also asked whether employees are capable of spotting phishing and malware when browsing from their work computers. 49% of the executives say that their employees will not be able to spot a bad link or a website that’s trying to trick people in a phishing scam.

“In some highly regulated industries where employees have access to sensitive data – including Financial Services and Insurance (52%) and Healthcare (63%) – over half are pessimistic and believe most of their employees would not be able to distinguish a fake retailer’s link in a phishing attempt from a legitimate one,” says the survey.

“64% of medium-sized SMB executives and 68% of large-sized SMB executives say there is nothing they could do to stop the practice, despite being well aware of its risks.”

Using work devices to shop online might be inevitable, but people and companies can take a few steps to address most of the problems that could arise.

The survey was conducted online of 1,049 C-level executives and IT decision makers at businesses and organizations with 1–250 employees.