A Tuesday morning email lands in the inbox.
It appears to come from the CEO. The name checks out. The wording sounds plausible. Even the signature feels authentic.
"Hey — can you take care of something fast? I'm tied up in back-to-back meetings. I need you to process a vendor payment. I'll fill you in later."
The new hire hesitates.
They've only been with the company for four days. They're still learning the workflow. They don't yet know what normal looks like, and they definitely don't want to be the person who challenges the CEO during week one.
So they do what seems helpful and move forward.
By the time anyone realizes what's happened, the mistake has already cost you.
Why week one is the highest-risk window
Every spring, companies welcome a fresh group of employees, many of them recent graduates and summer interns stepping into their first professional roles. For employers, it's onboarding season. For scammers, it's prime time.
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 usually focus on your most experienced staff. They target the people who are still learning the environment because the early days come with uncertainty, unfamiliar routines, and very little instinct to rely on.
A new employee may not know what a legitimate request looks like. They may not understand how the CEO normally communicates. They haven't yet built the confidence or pattern recognition that helps them spot trouble, and criminals know how to exploit that gap.
But the real issue isn't the new employee. The biggest risk isn't someone being reckless. It's someone trying hard to do the right thing.
If you lead a team, you probably already know which person would be most likely to respond immediately.
The real problem isn't training alone. It's the setup.
Think about that employee's first day.
The laptop wasn't quite ready. Access wasn't fully provisioned. The email account was still being activated. They borrowed a coworker's login to get something done quickly. They saved files to their local drive because shared storage 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 fastest way to keep moving on a hectic day.
But during that first week, when systems aren't fully in place, several quiet risks start to build: shared credentials create untracked accounts, files sit outside your backups, personal devices touch company data, and no one has clearly explained what to do when something feels wrong.
The same Keepnet report also found that new employees are 44% more susceptible to phishing than tenured staff. That difference isn't about carelessness. It's about 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 create the weakness. The first day did.
What a secure first day should include
Solving this doesn't require a long lecture on cybersecurity. It requires three essentials to be ready before the employee arrives.
1. Their access is fully prepared, not patched together.
That means the laptop is ready, credentials are issued, and permissions are defined in advance. No borrowed logins, no temporary fixes, and no "we'll handle that later this week."
2. They understand what normal communication looks like in your company.
A quick 10-minute orientation can make a huge difference. Does the CEO ever send payment requests? Does anyone? What should they do if something feels suspicious? This isn't a formal training session; it's a simple briefing that gives context.
3. They know exactly where to go with questions.
The employee who paused before clicking that email may have asked for help if they had a safe, obvious place to turn. Most first-week errors stay hidden because new hires worry about looking inexperienced.
Give them a person. Give them a clear process.
Most security failures don't happen because someone ignores the rules. They happen because no one has explained the rules yet.
Your onboarding may already be strong. Your team may be small enough that the first few days feel personal instead of procedural. Still, if a new hire has ever had to improvise their way through week one — or if you're preparing to bring someone on this spring — it's worth tightening the process before that Tuesday email shows up.
Click here or give us a call at 801-356-9333 to schedule your free 15-Minute Discovery Call.
And if you know another business owner who's getting ready to hire, pass this along. The smartest time to lock the door is before anyone tries the handle.
