Local IT Manager Hires Hollywood Production Company to Create Content for Anti-Phishing Campaign

Local IT manager of Openz Industries, Ted Stephens, announced today that he had hired a Hollywood production company to create content for an anti-phishing campaign aimed at rank and file employees. Openz is a global leader in the manufacturing and distribution of automatic garage door opener remote controls and provides remotes for all of the leading automatic garage door manufacturers world-wide. The company has recently been hit with a spate of phishing attacks and employees have been easily fooled by fake emails exposing valuable company data to hackers intent on using the data to extort Openz or its customers for large sums of money. Specifically the hackers are believed to be targeting Openz' database of garage door opener codes. If those codes were compromised it would cripple Openz and possibly put hundreds of thousands of garage door opener remote control users at increased risk of break in. The previous attacks used fake emails that appeared to be coming from Openz corporate headquarters in Pittsburg, PA, and informed employees that they needed to update their user names and passwords as the company would soon be transitioning to new customer and pricing management software. The emails instructed the employees to click on a link which led to a fake website where they were then asked to input their current user names and passwords and asked several personal identifier questions during which many employees freely gave up their social security numbers, home addresses, personal cell phone numbers, and even detailed information on the whereabous of their sons, daughters, husbands, and wives. In the first atttack some 72% of employees fell for the scam. That number dropped to 40% for the second attack, but that second attack also saw several senior executive sduped. Mr Stephens said of the phishing attackss "While it is true that 40% of our employees were completely tricked by the fake emails and foolishly surrendered personal and confidential information, that leaves 60% who were not fooled. Those 60% need to fully understand the seriousness of the threat we face. They may have sniffed out the first wave of phising attacks fairly easily, but let's see how they do when Hollywood production company New Wave Entertainment steps up to the plate."

New Wave Entertainment (NWE) is a mid sized Hollywood studio most notable for producing all six movies in th popular horror franchise The Slasher Chronicles. They are well known for elaborate special effects and their movies have a reputation for tricking audiences, precisely the skill set Mr. Stephens said he was looking for when searching for someone to produce this upcoming anti-phishing campaign. Said Mr. Stephens "New Wave Entertainment has thirty years of special effects experience and a real knack for fooling audiences in their various movies with elaborate world building, set-ups, and deep and detailed character backstories. If they can't fool 100% of our employees I doubt anyone can. All employees need to fear phishing attacks, each and every one of them needs to feel the sting of embarrassment and humilation that comes with falling for a phishing scam, or they may never be prepared when a real attack comes. This is the only way to ensure that happens." When asked if the $40,000 Openz reportedly paid NWE would have beeen better spent on actually beefing up IT security systems with enhanced firewalls or improved filtering software Mr. Stephens responded "IT security is every employees job. IT cannot be responsible for IT security, that would just be insane. Are marketing the only ones responsible for marketing, or are business development only responsible for business development, or accounting only responsible for accounting. Oh wait..." With that Mr. Stephens bowed his head turned and walked away.