Has your organization provided phishing training for employees? With the mounting number of cybersecurity threats testing the protective walls around your business, awareness training for employees is an absolute must in 2025.

Airports are being shut down, telecom services are being interrupted, and in every other sphere as well, cybersecurity threats continue to grow. In 2025, we have witnessed a marked rise in HR-based phishing threats that try to trick employees into opening up their systems to malware and other more nefarious risks.

While cybersecurity training isn’t strictly an HR responsibility, with the number of threats that put both the employees and your business at risk, ignoring this aspect of training can be very dangerous in the long run. Especially when cursory online training is easily ignored, it falls to HR to ensure the learning is not ignored. Between sessions of AI tutoring and general upskilling, it’s time to slip in phishing training for employees, both old and new.

Phishing Training for Employees Could Save Your Business a Pretty Penny

Phishing attacks are on the rise, and they no longer look like the obvious scams we’ve learnt to avoid since the early days of the internet. These social engineering tactics rely on human errors and distractions to mislead unsuspecting parties into clicking on links or responding to interactions that expose the system to the real threats that lie behind them. These exploitative measures look innocent at first glance, but their strength lies in this very feature, disguising the real threat with a harmless facade.

On an individual level, many have their identity, data, or money stolen via these phishing scams. On an organizational level, every employee, executive, customer, and client associated with the business is affected when a cybersecurity threat is allowed in. While security hacks and exploitation of system vulnerabilities are commonly perceived as the biggest threats to an organization, Verizon’s 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report found that phishing attacks and pretexting via email caused 73% of social engineering breaches.

With such risks constantly looming, awareness training for employees could be the factor that keeps your business well away from such security risks.

Employee Phishing Threat Training Is Essential, Not Optional

Earlier this year, Keepnet’s 2025 New Hires Phishing Susceptibility Report found that 71% of new hires fall for phishing attempts due to their lack of experience and security training during the onboarding process. These new hires are also 44% more likely to fall for phishing scams compared to long-term employees.

This shows that with time, experience, and training, there is a decline in their vulnerability to such threats. The report also confirmed as much, recording a 30% drop in risk with targeted training to help them better understand the threats that surround them.

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