An email lands on a Tuesday morning.
It appears to come from the CEO. The name checks out. The wording feels believable. Even the signature seems authentic.
"Hey — can you take care of something for me really fast? I'm stuck in meetings all day. I need you to handle a vendor payment. I'll fill you in later."
The new hire stops and thinks.
They've only been there four days. They're still learning the basics. They don't yet know what's standard, and they definitely don't want to be the person who challenges the CEO during their first week.
So they help.
And with that one click, the damage begins.
Why the first week is the riskiest week
Every spring, companies welcome a fresh group of employees, many of them recent graduates and summer interns stepping into their first professional roles. For the business, it's onboarding season. For cybercriminals, it's open season.
Keepnet Lab's 2025 New Hires Phishing Susceptibility Report found that CEO impersonation emails are 45% more likely to succeed with new hires than with experienced employees.
Attackers don't target your most seasoned staff first. They focus on people who are still trying to understand how everything works, because that early stage is full of uncertainty.
A new employee doesn't yet recognize what a normal request looks like. They don't know how the CEO usually communicates. They haven't built the confidence or instincts that come with time, and criminals exploit that gap.
But here's the important part: the new employee isn't the weakness. The biggest risk isn't negligence. It's eagerness to be helpful.
If you lead a team, you probably already know exactly who would reply first.
The real problem isn't training. It's the setup.
Think back to day one.
The laptop wasn't ready. Access wasn't fully provisioned. The email account was still being built. They borrowed a coworker's login to check something quickly. They saved a file locally because the shared drive wasn't available. They used a personal phone to find a client number because it was faster.
None of that seemed unsafe. It felt practical. It felt like doing whatever was necessary to keep moving on a busy first day.
But during that first week, before everything is fully in place, several risks quietly stack up. Shared credentials leave behind untracked accounts, files drift outside backup systems, personal devices touch company data, and no one explains what to do when something feels suspicious.
According to the same Keepnet report, new employees are 44% more susceptible to phishing than tenured staff. That difference isn't about recklessness. It's about disorder. When onboarding is disorganized, security becomes an afterthought. That's exactly the kind of environment a phishing email is built to exploit.
The attack didn't create the vulnerability. The first day did.
What a secure first day should include
Solving this doesn't require a long security lecture on day one. It requires three things to be ready before the new hire arrives.
1. Their access is set up, not pieced together.
The laptop should be ready, credentials should be created, and permissions should be clearly defined. No borrowed logins, no temporary fixes, and no "we'll handle it later this week."
2. They understand what a normal request looks like in your company.
A quick 10-minute conversation can go a long way. Does the CEO ever ask for payment help by email? Who does? What should an employee do if something feels unusual? This isn't formal training; it's basic onboarding guidance.
3. They know where to ask questions without hesitation.
The employee who paused before opening that message likely would have asked for help if they knew who to turn to. Many first-week mistakes happen in silence because new hires don't want to appear inexperienced.
Give them a person. Give them a process.
Most security failures don't happen because someone ignores the rules. They happen because no one has explained the rules yet.
Maybe your onboarding is already strong. Maybe your team is small enough that the first few days feel personal instead of procedural. But if a new hire has ever had to improvise through week one — or if you're planning to hire this spring — it's worth addressing before that Tuesday email arrives.
Click here or give us a call at 614-889-6555 to schedule your free Consult.
And if you know another business owner who's preparing to hire, send this their way. The best time to close that gap is before anyone gets the chance to walk through it.
