On a Tuesday morning, an email lands in the inbox.
It appears to come from the CEO. The sender name checks out. The wording feels right. Even the signature looks legitimate.
"Hey — can you handle something for me fast? I'm tied up in meetings. I need you to take care of a vendor payment. I'll fill you in later."
The new hire hesitates.
They've only been at the company for four days. They're still learning the workflow. They don't yet know what's typical, and they certainly don't want to be the one who questions the CEO during their first week.
So they help.
And in that moment, the breach begins.
Why week one is the biggest risk
Every spring, organizations welcome a fresh group of hires, many of them recent graduates and summer interns entering their first professional roles. For businesses, it's onboarding season. For attackers, it's open season.
Keepnet Lab's 2025 New Hires Phishing Susceptibility Report found that CEO impersonation emails are 45% more likely to work on new hires than on employees with experience.
Cybercriminals don't usually target your most seasoned team members. They focus on people who are still getting oriented, because the early days are full of uncertainty and unspoken rules.
A new employee may not know what a legitimate request looks like. They may not understand how the CEO normally communicates. They haven't had time to build confidence or pattern recognition, and attackers exploit that gap.
But the truth is, the new hire isn't the weakness. The biggest risk isn't the person who makes a mistake. It's the person who is trying to do the right thing.
If you lead a team, you probably already know exactly who would respond first.
The real problem isn't training. It's the setup.
Think about a new employee's first day.
The laptop wasn't fully prepared. Access wasn't complete. The email account was still being created. They used someone else's login to check one quick item. They saved a document locally because the shared drive wasn't available. They reached for a personal phone to find a client number because it was faster.
None of that seemed dangerous. It felt practical. It felt like being flexible and getting through a busy first day.
But during that first week, while everything is still coming together, a few critical issues quietly emerge. Shared credentials create untracked accounts, files slip outside backup coverage, personal devices touch company data, and no one explains what to do when something feels suspicious.
The same Keepnet report also showed that new employees are 44% more vulnerable to phishing than more experienced staff. That difference isn't about carelessness. It's about disorder. When onboarding is messy, security becomes an afterthought. That's exactly where the phishing email thrives.
The attack didn't create the weakness. The first day did.
What a secure first day should include
Solving this doesn't mean delivering a long security lecture on day one. It means making sure three essentials are in place before the new employee arrives.
1. Their access is ready, not improvised.
The laptop should be set up, credentials should be issued, and permissions should be clearly assigned. No borrowed logins, no temporary fixes, and no "we'll figure it out later this week."
2. They understand what normal communication looks like.
This can be a brief 10-minute conversation. Does the CEO ever email about payments? Does anyone? What should they do if something feels unusual? This isn't a formal training session; it's practical orientation.
3. They know who to ask without hesitation.
The employee who paused before clicking that message likely would have asked for help if they had a clear person to contact. Most first-week mistakes stay hidden because new hires don't want to seem inexperienced.
Give them a contact. Give them a simple process.
Most security failures don't happen because someone ignores the rules. They happen because the rules haven't been made clear yet.
Maybe your onboarding process is already strong. Maybe your company is small enough that first days feel more personal than structured. Still, if a new hire has ever had to improvise through week one — or if you're planning to bring someone onboard this spring — it's worth having the conversation before that Tuesday email shows up.
Click here or give us a call at 506-383-2895 to schedule your free 15-Minute Discovery Call.
And if you know another business owner who is hiring soon, share this with them. The smartest time to lock the door is before anyone tries the handle.
