The message lands on a Tuesday morning.
It appears to be from the CEO. The sender name is correct, the wording feels believable, and even the signature looks 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 at the company for four days. Everything is still unfamiliar. They don't yet know what normal looks like, and they certainly don't want to be the person who questions the CEO during their first week.
So they do what seems helpful.
And in a matter of seconds, the mistake becomes costly.
Why the first week is the riskiest week
Every spring, businesses welcome a fresh group of employees, many of them recent graduates and summer interns stepping into their first professional roles. For the company, it is onboarding season. For cybercriminals, it is prime opportunity.
According to Keepnet Lab's 2025 New Hires Phishing Susceptibility Report, CEO impersonation emails are 45% more likely to succeed with new hires than with experienced employees.
Attackers rarely target the people who have been around the longest. They focus on those who are still learning the business because the early days are full of uncertainty, and uncertainty creates openings.
A new employee may not recognize a suspicious request. They may not know how leadership usually communicates. They have not yet built the confidence or pattern recognition that comes with time, and criminals exploit that gap.
But the real issue is not the new employee. The biggest risk is not someone being reckless. It is someone trying too hard to be helpful.
If you manage a team, you probably already know exactly who would respond first.
The problem is not only training. It is the process.
Now picture that employee's first day.
The laptop was not ready. Access was incomplete. The email account was still being provisioned. They used a coworker's login to check one thing. They saved a file locally because the shared drive was unavailable. They reached for their personal phone to find a client number because it was faster.
None of it felt dangerous. It felt practical. It felt like problem-solving on a hectic first day.
But during that first week, before everything is fully in place, several quiet risks appear: shared credentials create untracked access, files move outside backup protection, personal devices touch company data, and no one explains what to do when something seems suspicious.
The same Keepnet report found that new employees are 44% more susceptible to phishing than tenured staff. That difference is not about carelessness. It is about confusion. When onboarding is messy, security becomes an afterthought. That is exactly the environment a phishing email is designed to exploit.
The attack did not create the weakness. The first day did.
What a secure first day should include
Solving this does not require a long lecture about cybersecurity on day one. It starts with making sure three essentials are ready before the employee arrives.
1. Their access is set up properly, not patched together.
That means the laptop is prepared, credentials are issued, and permissions are clearly defined. No borrowed logins, no temporary workarounds, and no "we'll fix that later this week."
2. They understand what a normal request looks like in your company.
This can be a short, 10-minute conversation. Does the CEO ever email about payments? Does anyone? What should they do if a message feels suspicious? This is not formal training; it is basic orientation.
3. They have a safe place to ask questions.
The employee who paused before opening that email probably would have asked for help if they knew who to contact. Most first-week mistakes happen quietly because new hires do not want to seem inexperienced.
Give them a person. Give them a process.
Most security failures do not 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 new hires get a more personal welcome than a formal process. But if anyone has ever had to improvise through their first week — or if you are planning to hire this spring — it is worth having the conversation before that Tuesday email shows up.
Click here or give us a call at 630-895-8208 to schedule your free Consult.
And if you know another business owner who is about to hire, pass this along. The best time to secure the door is before anyone reaches for the handle.
