The Psychology of Phishing: Why Smart People Fall for Scams
The positive aspect of it is that it happened in a secluded environment, with periodically phishing training by our company’s internal cybersecurity experts. While negative aspect of it is the fact that it actually happened. Not once.
According to Verizon’s 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report, phishing remains one of the top three initial attack vectors, with social engineering involved in nearly 70% of attacks.
68% of breaches involved a non-malicious human element, like a person falling victim to a social engineering attack or making an error. [source]
Another interesting fact is that the median time for users to fall for phishing emails is less than 60 seconds. Therefore, urgency is almost always presented in a phishing email. [source]
These are interesting facts, but raw statistics don’t tell the complete story. Let’s dig further into why our brain betrays us at the worst moments.
