An email lands on a Tuesday morning.
It appears to come straight from the CEO. The sender name is right, the wording feels authentic, and the signature looks convincing enough to pass a quick glance.
"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 stops and thinks.
They've only been there four days. They are still learning the process, still figuring out what normal looks like, and they definitely do not want to be the person who challenges the CEO during week one.
So they try to be useful and move forward.
That single decision is enough.
Why week one is the highest-risk period
Each spring, companies welcome a fresh group of employees, including graduates and summer interns entering their first professional roles. For the business, it is onboarding season. For attackers, it is prime hunting season.
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 staff.
Cybercriminals do not usually target your most experienced people first. They focus on employees who are still learning because the early days create a gap where routines, expectations, and confidence have not fully formed yet.
A new employee may not know what a legitimate request should look like. They may not understand how leaders normally communicate. They have not had time to build judgment or confidence, and that uncertainty is exactly what attackers exploit.
But the real issue is not the new hire. The biggest risk is not someone being reckless. It is someone trying hard to be helpful.
If you lead a business, you probably already know who on your team would respond first.
The problem is not just training. It is the process.
Think about that employee's first day.
The laptop was not ready. Access was incomplete. The email account was still being built. They borrowed another person's login to check something fast. They saved a file locally because the shared drive was unavailable. They reached for a personal phone to look up a client number because it seemed quicker.
None of that felt dangerous. It felt efficient. It felt like getting through a busy first day.
Yet during that first week, while the setup is still unfinished, key risks quietly take shape. Shared credentials create untracked access. Files drift outside backup coverage. Personal devices touch company data. No one has clearly explained what to do when something seems suspicious.
According to the same Keepnet report, new employees are 44% more susceptible to phishing than tenured staff. That difference is not about negligence. It comes from disorder. When onboarding is messy, security becomes an afterthought. That is the environment phishing emails are designed to exploit.
The attack did not create the weakness. The first day did.
What a secure first day should look like
Solving this does not require a lengthy security lecture on day one. It requires three essentials to be in place before the new hire arrives.
1. Their access should be ready, not improvised.
That means the laptop is prepared, credentials are created, and permissions are clearly assigned. No shared logins, no temporary fixes, and no "we'll figure that out later this week."
2. They should know what a normal request looks like in your company.
This can be a quick 10-minute conversation. Does the CEO ever email about payments? Does anyone? What should they do if a message feels strange? This is not formal security training; it is practical orientation.
3. They need a safe place to ask questions.
The employee who hesitated before clicking that message probably would have asked someone if they knew who to contact. Many 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 process is already strong. Maybe your team is small enough that the first few days feel more personal than procedural. But if a new hire has ever had to improvise their way through week one — or if you are planning to bring someone on this spring — it is worth addressing before that Tuesday email shows up.
Click here or give us a call at 608-416-2400 to schedule your free 10-Minute Discovery Call.
And if you know another business owner who is hiring soon, send this their way. The smartest time to secure the door is before anyone tries the handle.
