Employees' vigilance to be tested with more complex simulations

Jun 23, 2014 13:43 GMT  ·  By

After a security exercise in December 2013 showed that 37% of the employees of the Justice Department in Canada fell for common phishing scams, the organization continued to raise awareness of the issue and recorded a 50% improvement.

The awareness campaign is designed to inform and educate on cyber-security issues and how integrity of the agency’s computer systems can be maintained with simple methods.

The experiment in December revealed that out of 5,000 employees that were sent a fake phishing email, 1,850 clicked on the link included in it. The poor result led to the continuation of the awareness campaign, with baiting emails being sent in February and April, too.

According to Dean Beeby from National Post, a spokeswoman for the Department of Justice in Canada said that the latest results showed that the employees learned their lesson and refrained from clicking on the dubious links, the recorded rate being reduced to half.

“As this project progresses, we are pleased that the effectiveness of this campaign is showing significant improvement,” she said.

The good results are also due to the fact that those clicking on the bad links are notified through a pop-up, which provides useful tips for avoiding future baits.

The representative also informed that no privacy breaches have been reported as a result of a real threat.

More exercises are planned for the month of June and August, their complexity level growing gradually.