Your Phishing Training is a Total Waste of Money
(And Here’s What Actually Works)
Folks, I’ve got some news that’ll make you spit out your morning coffee: that annual cybersecurity training you’re forcing your employees to watch? Yeah, the one with the cheesy 1980s-style graphics and the narrator who sounds like Ben Stein from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off? It’s about as effective as a screen door on a submarine. 🚪🌊
A bombshell study from UC San Diego just dropped, and it confirms what many of us suspected all along – those mandatory “watch this video and click next” cybersecurity training programs are doing absolutely zilch to stop your team from clicking on phishing emails. We’re talking zero, nada, nothing. The trained staff were just as likely to click on malicious links as the untrained ones. It’s like teaching someone to swim by showing them a PowerPoint about water.
📋 What We’ll Cover Today:
The Shocking Truth About Phishing Training Results 📊
Here’s where it gets really wild, folks. Even when companies went all fancy with simulated phishing attacks – you know, those fake emails from “IT Support” asking you to verify your password – the improvement was a measly 2%. That’s right, 2 percent! You’d get better results teaching your goldfish to fetch.
⚠️ Warning: The researchers found something even more disturbing: click rates actually increased over time as people got tired of the constant warnings. It’s like the boy who cried wolf, except the wolf is a hoser in his mom’s basement trying to steal your banking credentials. #SecurityFatigue
What really determined whether someone clicked wasn’t their training level – it was the email topic. HR announcements about vacation policies? Click city! Fake shipping notifications during the holidays? Cha-ching for the hosers! It turns out we’re all suckers for certain types of messages, trained or not.
Why Phishing is Now Ransomware’s Best Friend 🦹♂️
Now here’s the part that should really get your attention: phishing has become the number one entry point for ransomware in 2025. We’re talking 35% of all ransomware cases starting with a simple phishing email, up from 25% just last year. That’s not a trend – that’s a hockey stick graph heading straight for your wallet.
Think about it like this: remember in the original Star Wars when the Death Star had that one tiny vulnerability? Well, phishing emails are like having a thousand of those vulnerabilities, and each one of your employees is potentially Luke Skywalker for the bad guys. Except instead of saving the galaxy, they’re accidentally inviting the Empire into your computer network. 🌟
The hosers aren’t even trying that hard anymore. They know that traditional cybersecurity training is about as effective as a chocolate teapot. They’re banking on human nature, fatigue, and that one person who’s had too much coffee and not enough sleep clicking on their bogus email.
The Real Problem: It’s Not Stupidity, It’s Human Nature 🧠
Let me tell you a story about my buddy Dave (not his real name, obviously). Dave runs a small accounting firm with about 15 employees. He made everyone watch a two-hour cybersecurity training video every January. He even had them sign papers saying they understood the dangers of phishing.
Three weeks after the latest training, his office manager – who’d scored 100% on the quiz – clicked on an email about a “failed UPS delivery.” Boom! 💥 Their entire client database was encrypted, and the hosers wanted $50,000 in Bitcoin. Dave ended up paying because he couldn’t afford to lose his clients’ tax records. #RansomwareNightmare
The problem isn’t that Dave’s office manager was dumb. She’s actually brilliant at her job. The issue is that phishing training alone doesn’t address the real vulnerability: we’re asking humans to be perfect security filters 24/7, which is like asking a fish to climb a tree.
What Actually Works (Spoiler: It’s Not More Videos) 🛡️
Alright folks, enough doom and gloom. Let’s talk solutions that actually work better than those VHS-quality training videos. The UC San Diego study and other research point to some real fixes that don’t involve making your team watch another mind-numbing presentation.
Kill Those Pathetic Passwords with Real MFA 🔐
First up, you need to implement what the tech folks call “phishing-resistant MFA” – that’s multi-factor authentication for normal people. But here’s the kicker: those SMS text codes you’re using? They’re about as secure as leaving your house key under the doormat with a neon sign pointing to it.
Instead, get yourself set up with something like Duo (https://duo.com). It uses push notifications to your phone or, even better, physical security keys that make it nearly impossible for hosers to break in, even if they trick someone into giving up their password. Think of it as the difference between a deadbolt and a bank vault. #GetDuo
Stop the Password Sharing Madness 🚫
I visited a dental office last month where the entire staff was sharing one login for their patient system. The password? “Dental123!” I’m not making this up, folks. That’s like giving every employee a copy of your house key and hoping nobody makes extras for their sketchy cousin.
You need to enforce single sign-on (SSO) with conditional access. This means each person gets their own login, and the system checks if they’re logging in from a trusted device and location. If Martha from accounting suddenly tries to log in from North Korea at 3 AM, the system says “Nice try, hoser!” and blocks it.
Shut Down the Side Doors 🚪
Here’s something that’ll make you want to bang your head against the wall: many businesses still have old email protocols running that bypass all your fancy security. It’s like installing a state-of-the-art alarm system but leaving the basement window open.
Turn off POP, IMAP, and SMTP basic authentication. Disable app passwords. These are favorite entry points for criminals who’ve bought stolen credentials on the dark web. Think of it as closing all those weird doors in your house that you never use anyway – like that milk door from 1952 that’s still in your kitchen wall.
Real-Life Horror Stories (And How to Avoid Them) 👻
Let me share three quick stories from the trenches that’ll make your hair stand up:
Story 1: A real estate company in Maine thought they were clever with quarterly phishing awareness training. Their top agent still wired $300,000 to a fake account after getting a spoofed email from what looked like their title company. The email came through during a legitimate transaction, making it seem totally normal. #WireTransferHorror
Story 2: A veterinary clinic in New Hampshire had all their patient records encrypted after someone clicked on a “Invoice Past Due” email. They’d just completed their annual cybersecurity training two weeks prior. The ransomware spread to their backup system too because – surprise! – it was always connected to the main network.
Story 3: A craft brewery in Vermont lost their entire customer email list and credit card processing ability for a week after an employee clicked on a fake social media notification. The employee? Their IT-savvy millennial marketing manager who “should have known better.”
The Action Plan That Actually Works 🎯
Okay folks, enough scary stories. Here’s your homework – and unlike that useless security awareness training, this stuff actually works:
Immediate Actions (Do These TODAY)
Switch to phishing-resistant MFA: Get Duo or use FIDO2 security keys. Kill SMS codes wherever possible. Your bank account will thank you.
Check for compromised credentials: Use a service like SpyCloud to see if any of your passwords are floating around the dark web. If they are, change them immediately using 1Password for unique, strong passwords.
Harden your email settings: Set up strict DMARC, DKIM, and SPF records. If that sounds like alphabet soup, call your IT person right now and tell them Craig said to do it. They’ll know what it means.
This Week’s To-Do List
Lock down your endpoints: Use Windows Defender (it’s actually good now!) and restrict macros in Office documents. Set up application control so random programs can’t just install themselves.
Implement email filtering: Get URL detonation and safe-linking turned on. Services like OpenDNS or Cisco Umbrella for businesses can block malicious sites before they even load.
Set up continuous monitoring: Don’t wait for annual reviews. Monitor for suspicious logins and force password resets when something fishy happens (pun intended).
Ongoing Improvements
Replace annual training with micro-nudges: Instead of boring yearly videos, use just-in-time warnings when someone’s about to do something risky. It’s like having a guardian angel tap you on the shoulder instead of a professor lecturing you months in advance.
Measure what matters: Stop tracking training completion rates. Instead, measure how quickly your team reports suspicious emails and how fast you can shut down compromised accounts. #MetricsThatMatter
The Bottom Line: Training Alone Won’t Save You 💡
Here’s your “Aha!” moment, folks: we’ve been fighting the wrong battle. We’ve been trying to train humans to be perfect, when we should be building systems that assume humans will make mistakes. It’s like teaching someone to never trip instead of just putting up a guardrail.
The UC San Diego study proves what many of us suspected – traditional phishing training is about as useful as a ashtray on a motorcycle. The real solution isn’t more awareness; it’s better authentication, smarter systems, and assuming that someone, somewhere, is going to click on that sketchy link.
Remember, in 2025, phishing is responsible for more than a third of all ransomware attacks. That number is going up, not down. The hosers are getting smarter, and they’re counting on us to keep doing the same old ineffective training.
Your Next Steps (Yes, You!) 👣
So what should you do right now? First, stop feeling bad if someone in your organization clicks on a phishing email despite all your training. The data shows it’s not a training problem – it’s a systems problem.
Second, implement at least three of the technical controls I mentioned above. Start with phishing-resistant MFA using Duo, get 1Password for your team, and turn on Windows Defender if you haven’t already. These three changes alone will do more than a decade of training videos.
Third, share this article with every business owner you know. Seriously, forward it, post it on LinkedIn, print it out and nail it to the coffee room wall like Martin Luther’s 95 Theses. The more people who understand that cybersecurity training programs alone won’t save them, the fewer businesses will fall victim to these hosers.
📬 Want to Stay Protected?
Head over to CraigPeterson.com and sign up for my free weekly Insider Notes Newsletter. I’ll keep you updated on what’s actually working in cybersecurity, not what some vendor wants to sell you.
Because at the end of the day, your business is too important to leave its security up to whether Bob in shipping had enough coffee before checking his email.
Stay safe out there, and remember: the best phishing training is the training you don’t need because your systems won’t let the bad stuff through in the first place! 🛡️✨
#PhishingPrevention #CybersecurityReality #RansomwareProtection #MFANow #SecurityThatWorks #StopTheHosers #BusinessSecurity #2025Security #PhishingTrainingFail #GetSecureToday
Remember: Knowledge + Action = Protection
Don’t just read this and move on. Take action today. Your future self will thank you when you’re NOT explaining to customers why their data was compromised. 💪