According to Barracuda’s 2023 Spear-Phishing Trends report, it takes an average of 43 hours to detect a spear phishing attack. That is a LOT of time in the cybercrime world!

As if we didn’t know already, this new data makes it crystal clear that spear phishing is a real problem… and organizations may not properly be prepared to detect and address it.

Spear phishing is a highly personalized form of email attack. Hackers research their targets and craft carefully designed messages, often impersonating a trusted colleague, website, or business. Spear-phishing emails typically try to steal sensitive information, such as login credentials or financial information, which is then used to commit fraud, identity theft, and other crimes. 

In a nutshell: Cybercriminals know that the more targeted a phishing attack, the more likely the attack will be a success.

According to Barracuda’s 2023 Spear-Phishing Trends report, this is exactly what’s happening:

• 50% of organizations were victims of phishing in the last 12 months
• 1 in 4 organizations had at least one email account compromised in 2022
• A typical organization receives 5 highly personalized spear phishing emails per day

With all this phishing, how well are organizations responding? According to the report…

• On average, it takes organizations nearly 100 hours to identify, respond to, and remediate a post-delivery email threat
• It takes 43 hours to detect the attack and 56 hours to respond and remediate after the attack is detected

100 hours is plenty of time for a threat actor to wreak havoc within an organization. This means that it is far more important to prevent attacks in the first place, rather than planning to clean them up afterward (which is no plan at all).

New-school security awareness training can prevent spear phishing. Also, a lightweight security orchestration, automation and response platform can allow Security Operations teams to cut through the inbox noise and respond to spear phishing threats more quickly and efficiently.

How do you easily and quickly incorporate security prevention tactics and tools into your law firm’s security protocols? Just call Savvy to get your hands on the world’s top-tier prevention tools. 

Savvy and KnowBe4

If you are looking for a turn-key way to train your law firm’s employees to recognize and report spear phishing attempts, contact Savvy today. We are a preferred provider of all KnowBe4 training products and services. And we are the number-one certified partner for the legal industry.

And if you’ve been struggling to get upper management to commit themselves to security awareness training, forward this story to them!