KnowBe4 said it was looking for a software engineer for its internal IT AI team. The firm hired a person who, it turns out, was from North Korea and was “using a valid but stolen US-based identity” and a blue ocean strategy meaning photo that was “enhanced” by artificial intelligence. There is now an active FBI investigation amid suspicion that the worker is what KnowBe4’s blog post called “an Insider Threat/Nation State Actor.”
A History of Reliable Products and Service
- Usually, taking that next step in looking for an outside vendor means you are looking for help with frequency, providing the right kind of content, and the ability to couple that with the correct activities that should be happening like simulated phishing.
- Investors seeking higher returns typically must take on greater risk.
- With a record number of over 750 new corporate accounts in December alone and a very robust 88% customer retention rate, our client list grows to over 8,000 enterprise accounts.
- Ensuring coordination between HR, IT, and security teams helps create a holistic defense against advanced persistent threats.
- Below is an example of the friendly screens and invitations end-users will see in their experience.
Whether the phish is real or simulated, your simple “Phish Alert Button” click will help our office by identifying real threats as well as ways we can improve our training and awareness strategy. One recent study found that employees forget much of what they’ve learned about cybersecurity after just a few months unless training is repeated regularly. Rather than subjecting employees to repetitions of the same old content, KnowBe4’s short training modules provide fresh content as part of an ongoing training campaign. Difficulty ratings are switched up to test users across different levels of phishing sophistication, mimicking the different types of real-world phishing attacks your users will see (as graphically shown below). Templates include static text and images, as well as dynamic fields, which can change based on the intended recipient, such as the name used in a personalized greeting.
Nonprofit Security Awareness Training Case Study
The KnowBe4 Customer Success team is one of the secrets to our (and your) success, and has resulted in the highest user satisfaction ratings in the entire industry based solely on user-provided feedback. Serving as your primary point of contact, your dedicated Customer Success Manager (CSM) will become your trusted adviser and will work with you to tailor your program requirements based on your organizational goals, objectives and desired outcomes. Included as part of your product subscription, KnowBe4’s Customer Success Team spans the globe, ensuring timely support no matter where you’re located. We help you enable your employees to make smarter security decisions, every day.
Examples of knowledge brokers
If you see such a suspicious e-mail appear in your inbox, all you need to do is click the “Phish Alert Button” at the top of the e-mail. Some of the reported e-mails will be simulations from our office, helping you identify threats in a low-stakes scenario and letting us know that you are aware of the hallmarks of phishing. Some of the reported e-mails will likely be actual phishing attempts, and our office will investigate the threat and take steps to prevent it from spreading.
The Forrester Wave™: Security Awareness and Training Solutions, Q1 2022
“The scam is that they are actually doing the work, getting paid well, and give a large amount to North Korea to fund their illegal programs,” wrote Sjouwerman. Another approach is to align your investments with your values or with economic and social trends. These are called themes, and we’ve highlighted specific investments for a range of different ones. High risk/high reward may be appropriate because you have plenty of time to try to recover from losses or setbacks.
KnowBe4, which provides security awareness training, was fooled by stolen ID.
With cybercriminals knowing your untrained users are the weakest link into your network, it is more important than ever to add cyber security awareness training and strengthen that people layer. Today’s email filters have an average 7-10 percent failure rate; and about 30 percent of data breaches are caused by repeat offenders from within the organization. Security awareness training is a form of education that seeks to equip employees of an organization with the information they need to protect themselves and their organization’s assets from loss or harm. In a startling incident, KnowBe4, a leading security awareness training company, discovered that a remote software engineer they had recently hired was actually a North Korean threat actor using a stolen U.S. identity and an AI-enhanced photograph. Despite the thorough hiring process that included video interviews, background checks, and reference verifications, the sophisticated deception was only uncovered after the new hire began loading malware onto a device. This incident underscores the growing risks of identity fraud in the digital age and highlights the need for robust identity verification measures in the hiring process.
Analyzing the PST statistics shows that on average, 20% of people in organizations will click on phishing links. Stu Sjouwerman, Co-founder of Sunbelt Software, starts KnowBe4, LLC and begins the development https://www.1investing.in/ of Internet Security Awareness Training (ISAT) Version 1. Experience in Sunbelt Software showed that the end-user is the weak link in IT Security, and cybercrime bypassed antivirus with social engineering.
June 2020 is a month of achievements, including the highest sales per day, highest sales per month, highest PhishER sales, second-best quarter, and amazing international sales. KnowBe4 is chosen as a top workplace for the fourth time in a row by the Tampa Bay Times, and for the third consecutive year by the Tampa Bay Business Journal. KnowBe4’s record Q is our 18th-straight quarter of growth, with a 263% year-over-year sales increase.
It’s in our DNA and understand that your security best practices are just as important as the vendors’ practices you choose to trust. Where other IT security companies may value profits, we value, well…security. We believe in high-quality products at a super affordable price.Your Silver – Gold – Platinum – Diamond subscription level gives you access to increasingly advanced enterprise features which all are included in your subscription for that level. Not like other vendors that require “Managed Services” engagements to gain access to premium features like Industry Phishing Benchmarks, priority technical support, or even just to get you up and running. KnowBe4 reckons the laptop was sent to an “IT mule laptop farm” – facilities in North Korea or China where fake workers ply their trade for employers, using VPNs to hide their true location.
Rest assured that when we report on these findings, we will only report aggregated data and will always protect the privacy of our users. Discover why 65,000+ organizations use the KnowBe4 platform to improve their security awareness training while reducing the risk that phishing and other social engineering threats pose. For a Free Phishing Security Test, the email addresses will remain in our database for a limited time.
How this works is that the fake worker asks to get their workstation sent to an address that is basically an “IT mule laptop farm”. They then VPN in from where they really physically are (North Korea or over the border in China) and work the night shift so that they seem to be working in US daytime. The strength of our institutional information security relies on the knowledge and actions of individual users. Many of KnowBe4’s training modules were designed with the help of Kevin Mitnick, the one-time hacker and now internationally recognized cybersecurity specialist who provides an insider’s view into the world of cybercrime. Gamification features allow users to compete against their peers on leaderboards and earn badges while learning how to keep your organization safe from cyberattacks. “KnowBe4 needed a software engineer for our internal IT AI team,” the company explained.