An email lands on a Tuesday morning.
It appears to come from the CEO. The sender name is right, the tone feels believable, and even the signature seems legitimate.
"Hey — can you help me with something quickly? I'm in back-to-back meetings. Need you to handle a vendor payment. I'll explain later."
The new hire hesitates.
They've only been with the company for four days. They're still learning the process, still figuring out what normal looks like, and they don't want to be the one who challenges the CEO in their first week.
So they comply.
And in a matter of minutes, the harm is done.
Why the first week carries the highest risk
Each spring, companies welcome a fresh group of employees, many of them recent graduates and summer interns stepping into their first professional roles. For your business, it's onboarding season. For cybercriminals, it's prime opportunity.
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 usually target your most experienced staff. They go after people who are still learning the environment because the early days are full of uncertainty, and uncertainty makes manipulation easier.
A new employee doesn't yet know what a routine request should sound like. They don't know how the CEO normally communicates. They haven't developed the instincts or confidence that come with time, and criminals exploit that gap.
But the issue isn't the new hire. The biggest risk isn't someone being reckless. It's someone trying hard to be helpful.
If you lead a team, you probably already know exactly who would answer the fastest.
The real weakness isn't training. It's the setup.
Think back to that employee's first day.
Their laptop wasn't fully prepared. Access wasn't finished. Their email account was still pending. They used someone else's login just to get something done. They saved a file to their desktop because the shared drive wasn't available. They reached for their personal phone to find a client number because it was quicker.
None of that felt dangerous. It felt practical. It felt like the fastest way to keep moving on a hectic first day.
But during that first week, before everything is properly in place, a few critical risks quietly appear. Shared credentials create untracked accounts, files sit outside backup systems, personal devices touch company data, and nobody clearly explains what to do when something feels suspicious.
The same Keepnet report also shows that new employees are 44% more susceptible to phishing than tenured staff. That difference isn't driven by carelessness; it's driven by disorder. When onboarding is messy, security becomes an afterthought. That's the exact kind of environment a phishing email is designed to exploit.
The attack didn't create the weakness. The first day did.
What a strong first day should look like
Solving this doesn't require a long security lecture on day one. It requires three essentials to be ready before the new hire arrives.
1. Access should be ready, not improvised.
That means the laptop is prepared, credentials are created, and permissions are clearly mapped out. No borrowed logins, no temporary fixes, and no "we'll handle it later this week."
2. They should know what normal communication looks like in your company.
A short, 10-minute conversation can make a big difference. Does the CEO ever email about payments? Does anyone? What should they do if something seems unusual? This isn't a formal training session; it's basic orientation that gives them a reference point.
3. They need a safe place to ask questions.
The employee who paused before clicking that email likely would have checked with someone if they knew who to ask. Many first-week mistakes happen in silence because new hires don't want to look inexperienced.
Give them a person. Give them a process.
Most security failures don't happen because someone ignores the rules. They happen because nobody has taught the rules yet.
Maybe your onboarding is already in good shape. Maybe your team is small enough that the first week feels personal instead of procedural. But if you've ever watched a new hire make it up as they go through week one — or you're planning to bring someone on this spring — it's worth addressing before that Tuesday email arrives.
Click here or give us a call at 888-624-7383 to schedule your free 15-Minute Discovery Call.
And if you know another business owner preparing to hire, send this their way. The best time to secure that door is before anyone gets a chance to walk through it.
