
By Byron V. Acohido
Human beings remain the prime target in the vast majority of malicious attempts to breach company networks.
Related: Stealth tactics leveraged to weaponize email
Cybersecurity awareness training is valuable and has its place. Yet as Black Hat USA 2021 returns today as a live event in Las Vegas, it remains so true that we can always be fooled — and that the prime vehicle for hornswoggling us remains phishing messages sent via business email.
Cofense, a Leesburg, VA-supplier of phishing detection and response solutions, has set out to take another human trait – our innate willingness to help out, if we can — and systematically leverage our better instincts to help fix this while combining advanced automation technology to stop phishing attacks fast.
I had a lively discussion about this with Rohyt Belani, co-founder and CEO of Cofense, which started out as PhishMe in 2011.
Inspired by Homeland Security’s see-something-say-something anti-terrorism initiative, as well as by crowd-sourcing services like Waze, Cofense has set out to squash those phishing messages that circumvent Security Email Gateways and fool even well-intentioned employees. It is doing this essentially by training and encouraging employees, not just to be on high alert for phishing ruses, but also to deliver useful reconnaissance from the combat zone.