94% of U.K. Businesses Aren’t Adequately Prepared for AI-Driven Phishing Scams

A new report makes it clear that U.K. organizations need to do more security awareness training to ensure their employees don’t fall victim to the evolving use of AI.

Here at KnowBe4, we’ve long known that AI is going to be a growing problem, with phishing attacks and the social engineering they employ far more believable and effective.

At the same time, we’ve hoped that organizations over the years would employ awareness training to thwart the continually-growing threat of phishing attacks.

But, according to Vodafone Business’ latest report, Proactive Security – Phishing of the Future, businesses in the U.K. are going to quickly fall behind in their ability to spot and avoid AI-based phishing attacks, putting organizations at risk. According to Vodafone, AI-based phishing attacks take on many forms:

• Spear Phishing and Deepfakes
• Chatbot Phishing
• Natural Language Processing (NLP) Phishing
• Business Email Compromise (BEC) with AI
• Social Media Phishing and Social Engineering
• Phishing Kits with AI Automation

With nearly all businesses believing they aren’t prepared for such attacks, it’s necessary to answer the question “Why?”

The report points to one clear culprit – employees. According to the report, 78% of U.K. employees said they could confidently spot a phishing attempt, but only a third were able to correctly distinguish a scam from the real thing!

But it’s deeper than that; the report also points out that one-third of UK businesses haven’t provided cybersecurity training for their staff in the last two years. 

It’s evident that organizations need to continually educate their employees with new-school security awareness training, complete with some form of phishing testing that reinforces what’s been learned.

KnowBe4 empowers your workforce to make smarter security decisions every day. Over 70,000 organizations worldwide trust the KnowBe4 platform to strengthen their security culture and reduce human risk.

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