An email lands on a Tuesday morning.
It appears to come from the CEO. The sender name is correct. The wording sounds right. Even the signature feels authentic.
"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 in the company for four days. They're still learning the process. They don't yet know what's standard, and they certainly don't want to be the person who questions the CEO during their first week.
So they try to be helpful.
And in a few seconds, the damage is already underway.
Why the first week is the riskiest week
Each spring, organizations welcome a fresh group of employees, many of them recent graduates and summer interns starting their first professional roles. For companies, that means onboarding season. For cybercriminals, it means 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 focus on your most experienced people. They target the employees still finding their footing, because the early days are full of uncertainty and unfamiliar processes.
A new employee doesn't know what a normal request looks like yet. They don't know how the CEO usually communicates. They haven't had time to develop instincts or confidence, and criminals exploit that gap.
But here's the real issue: the new hire isn't the weakness. The most vulnerable employee is often the one who wants to be helpful.
If you run a business, you probably already know exactly who on your team would respond first.
The real problem isn't training. It's the setup.
Think back to that employee's first day.
The laptop wasn't ready. Access wasn't fully provisioned. Their email account was still being built. They borrowed a coworker's login to check one thing quickly. They saved a file locally because the shared drive wasn't available. They used a personal phone to look up a client number because it was faster.
None of that felt dangerous. It felt efficient. Practical. Like the smartest way to keep moving on a hectic first day.
But during that first week, before systems are fully in place, a few important risks quietly appear. Shared credentials create untracked accounts, files live outside backup systems, personal devices access company data, and nobody has clarified what to do when something feels suspicious.
The same Keepnet report found that new employees are 44% more susceptible to phishing than tenured staff. That difference doesn't come from recklessness. It comes from disorder. When onboarding is messy, security becomes an afterthought. That's exactly the environment a phishing email is designed to exploit.
The attack didn't invent the vulnerability. Day one did.
What a secure first day should include
Solving this doesn't require a long security lecture on day one. It starts with three essentials being ready before the employee arrives.
1. Their access is set up, not improvised.
The laptop should be ready, credentials should already exist, and permissions should be clearly assigned. No borrowed logins, no temporary fixes, and no "we'll handle it later this week."
2. They understand what normal looks like in your business.
This can be a fast 10-minute conversation. Does the CEO ever ask for payments by email? Does anyone? What should the employee do if a message feels unusual? This isn't a formal training session; it's simple, practical orientation.
3. They know exactly where to go with questions.
The person who paused before opening that email probably would have asked for help if they had known who to contact. Most first-week errors happen quietly because new hires don't want to appear inexperienced.
Give them a person. Give them a path.
Most security mistakes don't happen because someone ignores the rules. They happen because someone doesn't know the rules yet.
Maybe your onboarding process is already strong. Maybe your team is small enough that the first few days feel personal instead of procedural. But if you've ever had a new hire make things up as they go in week one — or if you're planning to add someone this spring — it's worth having the conversation before that Tuesday email shows up.
Click here or give us a call at 801-997-8000 to schedule your free 10-Minute Discovery Call.
And if you know another business owner who is about to hire, pass this along. The smartest time to lock the door is before anyone tries the handle.
