We get fake phishing emails that are actually from IT and if we don't recognize and report them, we get a talking-to. It's a good way of keeping employees vigilant.
A friend (who actually works in IT) apparently has a good system at his company. It actually automates turning real phishing attempts into internal tests. It effectively replaces links etc and sends it onwards. If the user actually clicks through, their account is immediately locked. It requires them to contact IT to unlock it again, often accompanied by additional training.
Wait. So your friend's company has the ability to reliably detect phishing attacks, but instead of just blocking them outright, it replaces the malicious phishing links with their own phishing links, sends those on to employees, and prevents them from doing their jobs of they fall for it?
Sounds like your friend's company's IT people are kind of dickheads
I work at a company that does something similar; it can be annoying to deal with these fake phishing emails from our own IT, but a 10-15 minute training session if you fail is a lot less disruptive than what can happen if you clicked the real link instead.
I consider myself a bit more tech-savvy than average, but I’ve almost fallen for a couple of these fake phishing emails. It helps me to keep up with what the latest versions of these attacks look like (and keeps me on my toes too…)
It's not every phishing email. I think it's technically those that get through the initial filters, and get reported, but don't quote me on that. Apparently it's quite effective. They also don't need to report every one. It's only if they do something that could have compromised the company that causes a lock down. It's designed to be disruptive and embarrassing, but only if they actively screw up.
My last company did this. They'd also send out surveys and training from addresses I didn't recognize, so I'd report those, too, only to be told they were legit 😂
We get those, but the sender email shows up as blahblah@employersname.kn0wbe4.compromisedblog.org or whatever. Literally the most obvious possible address. I'm always tempted to forward one to IT and ask if they're serious with that shit.
Ours are the opposite: the sender's email shows up as a normal name@company.com email. Gmail is supposed to warn when a return address is being spoofed like that, but I guess my company turned that warning off for these fake phishing emails. There's still no SPF but I don't check the SPF unless an email looks suspicious so I hope that that warning will work for real, sophisticated phishing.
Consider third-party vendor employees who have accounts at your workplace. They don't know what the norms are, or the safe URLs. Half your employees in non-coding roles don't know what the safe URLs are either. There's so much internal SSO mess that just about anything could be a real redirect. Overengineered internal messy networks keep any of this from actually accomplishing its intended purpose of "teaching employees a lesson".
I'm not sure what's worse: that you're teaching them to click on whatever they want because it's impossible to tell the difference, or that you're teaching them to click on nothing, which probably keeps them from doing their jobs.
Stop using email entirely and half of this goes away. Just tell them not to plug in USB drives.
I always just ignore anything that looks dodgy, I can't be bothered to spend the time reporting emails when I get so damn many that are either spam or phishing