What is phishing?
Phishing refers to attempts to obtain personal data of an Internet user via fake websites and e-mails and to use this data to commit identity theft.
In this process, target persons with deceptively real-looking e-mails are asked to reveal access data. With the mass of daily e-mails and under time pressure, this succeeds regularly.
Economic damage
In 2019, cybercrime in Germany caused costs of approximately 102.9 billion euros. In 2020, the German economy incurred total damage of 223 billion euros due to theft, espionage and sabotage. According to bitkom, a large proportion of attacks begin with social engineering, the manipulation of employees. Criminals exploit the "human factor" as the supposed weakest link in the security chain to obtain sensitive data such as passwords, for example.
The more information about the company and its employees is known online and the less trained the employees are, the more likely the successful attack via e-mail is.
"Companies spend millions of dollars on firewalls and secure access devices, and it's money wasted because none of these measures address the weakest link in the security chain: The people who use, administer and operate computer systems"Kevin Mitnick - the world’s most famous hacker
