An email lands on a Tuesday morning.
It appears to come from the CEO. The name is right. The wording sounds believable. Even the signature seems authentic.
"Hey — can you jump on something for me quickly? I'm stuck in meetings all day. I need you to handle a vendor payment. I'll fill you in later."
The new hire hesitates.
They've only been here four days. Everything is still unfamiliar. They don't yet know what's standard, and they certainly don't want to be the person who challenges the CEO during their first week.
So they try to be helpful.
And just like that, the breach begins.
Why week one is the riskiest week
Each spring, companies welcome a fresh group of employees, many of them recent graduates and summer interns starting their first professional roles. For the business, it's onboarding season. For cybercriminals, it's prime time.
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 experienced employees.
Attackers don't usually focus on your most seasoned staff. They target the people still learning the basics because the early days create a unique blind spot: everything is new, and nothing feels certain yet.
A new employee doesn't know what a routine request looks like. They don't understand how the CEO typically communicates. They haven't built instincts or confidence yet, and criminals exploit that uncertainty.
But here's the important part: the new hire isn't the issue. The most vulnerable employee isn't the one who doesn't care. It's the one who wants to do the right thing.
If you lead a team, you probably already know exactly who would reply first.
The real weakness 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. The email account was still being created. They borrowed a coworker's login to check something fast. They saved a file on their desktop because the shared drive wasn't available. They used their personal phone to look up a client number because it was quicker.
None of that felt dangerous. It felt practical. Efficient. Like the only way to keep moving on a hectic first day.
But in that first week, while everything is still coming together, quiet risks start to stack up. Shared credentials leave behind accounts no one monitors, files escape your backup systems, personal devices touch company data, and nobody has explained what to do when something seems suspicious.
The same Keepnet report also found that new employees are 44% more likely to fall for phishing than tenured staff. That gap isn't about negligence. It's about disorder. When onboarding is messy, security becomes an afterthought. That's the opening the phishing email is counting on.
The attack didn't create the weakness. The first day did.
What a secure first day should look like
Solving this doesn't require a long security lecture on day one. It means having three essentials in place before the employee arrives.
1. Their access is set up ahead of time, not made up on the fly.
That means the laptop is ready, credentials are created, and permissions are clearly assigned. No shared logins, no temporary workarounds, and no "we'll handle that later this week."
2. They understand 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 something feels off? This isn't formal security training; it's basic orientation.
3. They know exactly where to turn with questions.
The employee who paused before clicking that email probably would have asked someone if they knew who to ask. Most first-week mistakes stay hidden because new hires don't want to appear inexperienced.
Assign a point person. Define the process.
The biggest security failures rarely 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 the first few days feel more personal than procedural. But if you've ever had a new hire improvise through week one — or if you're preparing to bring someone on this spring — it's worth addressing before that Tuesday email shows up.
Click here or give us a call at 888-638-3621 to schedule your free 15-Minute Discovery Call.
And if you know another business owner who's getting ready to hire, send this their way. The best time to lock that door is before anyone tries the handle.
