GitLab conducts an interesting exercise to test its employees’ cybersecurity chops, virtual escape rooms are gaining popularity, and a growing number of adults join the millions of school-age and university students who have been studying at home during lockdown.
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GitLab runs phishing test against employees – and 20% handed over credentials from technology
Software development tools start-up GitLab recently carried out a targeted phishing campaign against its own remote-working staff to see how they would react. The results, for the most part, reveal the expected: roughly one-fifth of those targeted exposed their corporate login credentials, The firm’s security team said it selected 50 staff at random and sent them a targeted phishing email claiming to be a legitimate laptop upgrade offer from the GitLab IT department. Staff were asked to click on a link to accept the offer and were directed to a web portal to log in. Those who entered their credentials were redirected to an online corporate handbook that explains how to identify a phishing attack. In all, 17 of the targets, or 34 percent, clicked on the link, while ten, or one-fifth, entered their credentials.
Escape rooms, like everything else, have gone virtual! A story from Bloomberg highlights how escape room owners made the natural transition to virtual events as lockdown efforts were underway months ago. Videoconferences now help guide teams and often act as their eyes, ears and hands as they play. An industry tracking site says there are more than 2,300 escape room locations in the U.S., exploding from just two dozen in 2014.
And lastly, The Wall Street Journal’s story about a growing number of adults joining the millions of university students who have been studying at home during lockdowns is garnering lots of chatter on LinkedIn. Some are using automated lessons to pick up skills, with companies such as Skillshare and Udemy seeing a surge in enrollment, while others are reportedly engaging in more traditional teacher-student lessons over video chat, though teachers note the online format works better for some subjects than others. People are chiming in about their online learning efforts, citing their push to learn programming languages like Python, while others explained how their employers have pushed them to learn new skills with some of the extra time.
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