PhishMe aims to help organizations educate their employees on how to spot potential phishing threats . Its founder, Rohyt Belani, believes that users are the real key to security. In a recent post, it announced a $13 million increase in its second round of funding, which included participation from Paladin Capital Group and Aldrich Capital Partners. The first round of funding , which took place in 2012, was increased by $2.5 million, bringing the total funding amount to $15.5 million. PhishMe aims to give organizations a helping hand in addressing the risk of phishing emails by helping to educate their employees to recognize potential phishing threats. Phishing emails are seemingly genuine emails designed to trick users into clicking or performing an action that will result in some form of harm. With the new funding, the plan is to expand PhishMe’s technology to the next stage of its evolution. “From a behavior management perspective, we’re trying to positively influence employee behavior around phishing attacks,” Rohyt Belani, PhishMe’s CEO and co-founder, told eWEEK. “Over the past three years, the techniques and methods used in phishing attacks have changed, so PhishMe has been continuously improving its operation to mitigate the risks of phishing,” Belani said. Many attacks can be thwarted if an employee notices that a particular email address is reporting something out of the ordinary. For example, Belani said, if I get an email from the PhishMe CTO and the email starts “Dear Rohyt,” I’ll know something is wrong because the messages I receive from the CTO never start that way. Another key thing PhishMe has learned over the years is that most people, whether they admit it or not, have some form of attention deficit disorder (ADD) and won’t sit through a 45-minute seminar on phishing. As such, its approach to training is to have training options that are delivered in smaller chunks, lasting from 90 seconds to 2 minutes, in the form of an engaging video or infographic . “We’ve found that short, frequent training sessions are much more effective than longer, infrequent training sessions,” Belani said. PhishMe plans to launch a new product in the coming weeks that goes beyond simple training. The goal is to dispel the myth that people are the weakest link in security , Belani said.
