Experiments show that multi -toasking makes you more likely to fall for fishing emails

Photo of this: You’re on a zoom call, the silk is resonating, three spreadsheets are open and your inbox pings. At the same moment of divided attention, you remember the small red flag in an email. Similarly, fishing hides, and with 3.4 billion malicious emails daily, the stake cannot be high.

A new research on Banghaton University, the State University of New York’s School of Management, shows that multi -tasking significantly spoils the detection detection: When people are more burdened with information, the ability to see the drops of suspicious indicators. But the study also points to a surprisingly simple solution: timely, lightweight nodes that can redirect attention when it makes the most difference.

“When you work with numerous screens, your focus can never be focused on a screen or a particular email, especially when you handle quick tasks. If you want to respond to this email, it is easy to ignore these red flags in the fashing email.” “We have developed a plan for a very simple notification system to push people into danger factors, so hopefully, fishing messages do not disappear and people can find them more effectively.”

Experienced with 977 participants, shared multi -tasking scenarios. Participants memorized the work details or numbers (their “basic work”) while the fashing messages (a “secondary work”) were asked to spot.

Researchers found that when the working memory was high, the accuracy of phishing was reduced. However, when researchers introduced short reminders, the performance of participants’ detection also improved under heavy multi -tasking.

These reminders do not need to eliminate the flow of work. For example, by awakening multiple spreadsheets or messaging apps, an email client can show colorful alert banners in the upper part of a suspicious message.

During calendar notifications or task switching, a small system like “This message can be fake – another look” can focus. Using these gestures in these moments when workers engage or burden, organizations can help employees re -focus on detecting fashing when they are the most at risk.

This study also found that not all phishing messages are equal. “Goal Activation” indicators (such as reminders) are particularly helpful to the beneficiary messages who promise rewards, such as “now claim your gift card.” On the contrary, the damage -made messages (“your account will be closed in 24 hours”) often reduce the advantage of additional reminders, stimulating the monitoring itself.

This insight shows that organizations should avoid blanket reminders strategies that are a serious threat to employees. Instead, organizations can design information information, such as nods that are in line with the type of phishing.

Jiang said, as there is more sophisticated growth in phishing, organizations that are only adapting to their people and data protection will be in a better position.

“The techniques used by these fishermen are more sophisticated every day,” said Jiang. “Our studies show that phishing sometimes falls under multi -tasking, and then it is difficult to detect these risk -based, damaging messages, no matter what you do.

For employers, IT managers and security trainers, the study offers recommendations:

• Embed in daily tools, from outlook banners to the integration of slack or teams.
• Customize with content: Ling, More More More Remember to Rewarded Scanders.
• Train for reality: Most phishing training assumes extraordinary consumers, but real -world employees always do multi -task, so training should be reflected.

“Fishing in multi -tasking context: Working memory load, round activation, and message framing cue detection performance,” European Journal of Information System. It was jointly written by Zoo Kong Lu from the University in Albani, and Melina Head and Juni End from McMaster University in Canada.