Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

Social engineering remains a primary initial access vector for cybercriminals, according to a new report from Europol. “Social engineering, which exploits human error to gain access to systems or personal information, stands out as a prominent technique used by criminal actors in this context,” Europol says.

I am used to repeating some pretty big numbers when talking about the financial impact of cybercrimes. When you look into the data, it is pretty easy to start talking about tens of billions of dollars. I occasionally come across figures that are in the hundreds of billions of dollars in damage across multiple years globally. So, imagine my surprise when I learned the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said Americans lost $158.3B in 2023, one year, to scammers, and that annual figure is getting worse.

I recently had several conversations about repeat clickers. First with a Forrester analyst and then, shortly after, at KB4-CON Orlando following a presentation on the subject by Matthew Canham, Executive Director of the Cognitive Security Institute. After that, my approach was a little less organic: intrigued by the topic, I spoke with several KnowBe4 customers to find out how they manage repeat clickers.

Lead Researchers: James Dyer and Louis Tiley Between May 5 and May 7, 2025, KnowBe4 Threat Lab identified a phishing campaign originating from accounts created on the legitimate service ‘EUSurvey’. Although this was a focused campaign, on a smaller-scale to others identified by the team, it employed a combination of sophisticated techniques worth highlighting.

AI-generated voice deepfakes present an urgent threat to organizations, according to researchers at Pindrop. The researchers warn that speech generation tools can create realistic-sounding cloned voices in near real-time, allowing attackers to hold live conversations with victims while imitating someone the victim knows. Additionally, these tools can now convincingly imitate human emotions, making social engineering attacks even more persuasive.

In today's rapidly evolving threat landscape, cybercriminals are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their attack methodologies, particularly when it comes to email-based threats. Organizations worldwide are recognizing that a single-vendor approach to security, while valuable, may not provide the comprehensive protection needed to defend against the full spectrum of modern cyber threats.

Researchers at Google have published a report on the latest scam trends, noting an increase in travel-themed scams targeting people preparing for their summer vacations. “Ahead of the summer vacation season, our teams have observed a spike in travel scams,” the researchers write. “Fake travel websites lure users into booking travel with a promise of ‘too good to be true’ prices, experiences, or discounts.

Researchers at Google’s Mandiant have published a report on voice phishing (vishing) attacks, noting that these attacks have served as initial access points for recent waves of ransomware incidents. Threat actors often perform reconnaissance before launching social engineering attacks, collecting publicly available information in order to craft tailored, realistic scenarios.

What is AI really? Throughout this article, I will remove the hype and get to the most honest answer ever. Artificial Intelligence, or AI, or at least the first version of how we think of it today, was “invented” in the 1950s…a long time ago. Since then, various computer scientists and groups have worked on different iterations, often using different names, including machine learning and neural networks.

There are many things in our lives we must prepare for to be ready. For other things, we wing it, or we're not prepared to deal with it at the moment. For me, I've reached that point in my life where I needed to have a medical procedure done, and it was something I've put off for several years. It may not be very comfortable to admit, but last week, I had a colonoscopy. That's not exactly how you'd expect a cybersecurity blog to start, but hear me out on this one!