Common Business-Related Phishing Scams Include Fake HR and IT Subject Lines

KnowBe4’s Q2 phishing benchmarking, based on 54 million simulated emails across 55,675 organizations, highlights HR-themed (42%) and IT-themed (30%) lures—often using QR codes and cleaner, AI-assisted language—as especially effective, with heightened susceptibility in healthcare, pharma, hospitality, education, and insurance. The report shows average “Phish-prone Percentage” dropping from 34.3% to 4.6% after a year of ongoing training and advises vigilance with sender/URL verification, skepticism of urgency cues, and the use of MFA and filtering to mitigate social engineering risks.