09 July 2019

UKFast HQ

Hosting specialist UKFast has launched 'Phishing as a Service', a new platform to help enterprises defend against attacks through specifically designed testing and education.

It allows employers to launch pre-built phishing campaigns to specific employees, departments or a geographic locations.

What is more, the campaigns replicate some of the most commonly seen and most successful phishing attacks, including fake emails from huge organisations like Twitter and PayPal, down to individuals working at the actual company.

The programme provides a breakdown of which users opened the email, clicked the links and submitted data via the bogus landing pages. Training materials and modules can then be delivered to the employees who fail to identify the emails as malicious.

“Phishing is the place that most hackers start if they want to launch targeted attacks against a company,” explained UKFast chief technology officer Neil Lathwood. “It's proven to be one of the best ways to gain more information from high-level employees, who tend to fall for it a lot. They are also the ones most likely to hold critical data.Often the employees that you'd expect to be savvy about phishing attacks are the ones who leave the door open.”

He added that that phishing attacks are becoming more inventive and sophisticated as hackers create fake email chains with apparent conversations between board members.

Over 150 million phishing emails are sent every day. Of the businesses and charities that suffered a cyber-breach or attack in the last year, 80% identified a phishing attack as the likely cause, making it the most common type of attack.