Intro

Keylink Innovative Technology, a leading MSP in technology solutions, aims to provide consumers with cost-effective and innovative products. Founded in 1933, they’re on a mission to help businesses and organizations alike grow their company through offering  IT solutions and support, engineering, data analysis, video editing, and web design services.

As a managed service provider, Keylink IT offers various services, including email support and security. With customers nationwide and in almost every industry, Keylink IT wants to ensure its customer's access, information, and data remain secure from malicious phishing attacks.

Problem

Keylink IT began noticing an uptick in clients receiving and clicking on phishing emails. Often-times, the emails were impersonating their boss, colleagues, popular e-commerce stores, or even their bank. “We’ve had clients get an entire network encrypted because they clicked on a link and downloaded malicious software,” says Craig Mann, a Web Developer and System Administrator at Keylink IT.

“That became an issue because for a client who makes less than 1M a year, they are suddenly out of business for like 10 days while we recover their business because of encryption.” says Mann, “Or they sent out a payment to a company that is not really the company they say they are.”

With these types of attacks on the rise, Mann knew they needed to add to their security endeavors. They needed a plan that moved past just firewalls and really trained people to avoid manipulation by technology. “The human element, at least in our experience, is the biggest point of failure… You can have the best security infrastructure in place, but one employee can compromise it by either clicking on the wrong link or picking up a usb and plugging it into their computer.”

Ultimately, Keylink IT needed a solution to combat these phishing attacks and ensure their clients remained safe and secure from cybercriminals looking to steal their access, information, data, and money. 

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Solution

Mann was in search of a solution that would not only save him time and effort, but one that was cost effective for his clients. Working with companies of various sizes, Mann wanted to ensure the services he was offering were affordable and of high quality. 

After talking with several security awareness training providers, Mann ended up choosing Hook Security. “The cost was low enough that we can pitch you guys to companies who don’t have the biggest IT budget and still seem like a reasonable thing to invest in,” says Mann, “Because a lot of times these companies look at stuff like phishing training as an expense rather than an investment…”

“Hook Security was a quality solution that was also affordable.”

On top of that, Hook Security’s platform and long-list of features made Hook the tool of choice for Keylink IT. “I liked the look of the dashboard, auto enrollment for people who fail a phishing test, and the automation of campaigns, ” says Mann, “those things were a must have for me… we need something that I don’t have to babysit all day.”

“I was a big advocate for Hook Security when we were looking for an email security and phishing awareness platform.”

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Results

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Since kicking off with Hook Security, Keylink IT has seen a significant amount of improvement with not only the quantity of people failing phishing tests, but how their clients are responding and reacting to phishing attempts. 

“I have one team that had multiple people failing the phishing test initially,” says Mann, “I think we’re on month three for this client and I think they went from three or four people failing to one last month and zero this month,”

“But with Hook Security, it’s not an expense, it’s an investment”

Along with a decrease in click-through rate, Keylink IT has also seen a decrease in support tickets in response to phishing attempts. Previously, they would often receive these tickets, and an abundance of forwarded emails in response to suspicious emails. Now, with Hook Security, their end users are learning how to recognize and correctly respond to these phishing attempts. “That has had a big impact on our company since we started using Hook Security,” says Mann. Saving their company the time and effort needed to respond to these tickets, and giving them time back in their day.

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