Moray Council Simulated Phish – Were you Hooked?
Dear Colleagues,
As part of our ongoing effort to raise awareness about the threat against cyber security, a simulated phish was sent to everyone on Thu 7th November. Do you remember this:
The simulated phish was designed to represent one of the most prevalent forms of current email attacks – the file share. If you did happen to click on the link, you would have seen the following login screen:
This is how the cyber criminals harvest our data – collecting accounts and passwords. Submitting this data would have then taken you to a Learning Experience, advising that this was a simulation, along with some pointers to think about.
Did you Report it?
We saw some good positive responses to this email – the email was reported more than 500 times, and more than 390 ICT helpdesk calls were registered. The reporting varied; it was reported as SPAM/suspected scam/suspicious. Some colleagues queried whether it was genuine and/or safe to open, others suspected it was a phishing email and wanted to report it. Some went even further and alerted their colleagues to the danger.
Did you Open it?
Almost half of you did, and the good news is that around 20% of those people reported it. If you didn’t report it, hopefully you just deleted it. The bad news is that over 560 clicked on the link instead. Worse still, 276 of you submitted sensitive information – your email address and password. A few went on to report the email, after entering their information, but neglected to mention the fact. If you suspect that you’ve fallen victim to a phishing email, it’s important that you report exactly what happened as soon as possible – this would help us investigate and may limit the impact of a genuine attack.
What Does This Tell Us
The simulated phishing exercise has provided valuable insights into the current levels of cyber awareness. Despite the worrying number of people who responded to the email, there have been improvements since the last phishing simulation. The number of people who clicked on the link reduced from 15% to 10%, and the number who entered data from 9% to 5%
The purpose of this phishing simulation is to raise cyber awareness. We have previously run a phishing training module, but this is still outstanding for a large proportion of staff – if you haven’t already, please complete this as soon as possible.
Details of the previous training can be found here:
Passwords
If you no longer have the links to the training, please contact ICT and we can arrange for the training links to be resent.
The fact that some people not only reported the email to ICT, but also advised colleagues not to open it, is a great step towards a positive culture of vigilance and support within our organisation. Continued vigilance is the best defence we have against a cyber-attack, and we would encourage everyone to report any email that seems suspicious – if you’re not sure, please contact the ICT Servicedesk or report it to spam.reports@moray.gov.uk