The First Week Mistake: How Onboarding Chaos Creates Cyber Risks

The email shows up on a Tuesday morning.

It looks like it’s from the CEO. The name matches. The tone is right. Even the signature looks familiar.

“Hey — can you help me with something quickly? I’m in back-to-back meetings. Need you to handle a vendor payment. I’ll explain later.”

The new employee pauses.

They’ve been with the company for four days. They’re still figuring out how things work. They don’t know what’s normal yet, and they definitely don’t want to be the person who questions the CEO in their first week.

So, they go ahead and help.

And just like that, the damage is done.

Why the first week is the most dangerous week

Every spring, businesses bring in a new wave of employees largely made up of recent graduates and summer interns stepping into their first roles. For companies, it’s onboarding season. For attackers, it’s something else entirely.

According to Keepnet Lab’s 2025 New Hires Phishing Susceptibility Report, CEO impersonation emails are 45% more likely to succeed with new hires than with experienced employees.

Attackers don’t go after your most seasoned people. They go after the ones who are still learning the ropes because there’s a window at the beginning where everything is unfamiliar and nothing feels certain.

A new employee doesn’t know what a typical request looks like. They don’t know how the CEO usually communicates. They haven’t had time to build instincts or confidence, and cybercriminals take advantage of that uncertainty.

But here’s the thing: The new employee isn’t the problem. The most dangerous employee isn’t careless. It’s the one trying to be helpful.

If you run a business, you probably already know exactly who on your team would respond first.

The real gap isn’t training. It’s the system.

Now think back to that employee’s first day.

Their laptop wasn’t ready. Access hadn’t been fully set up. Their email account was still being created. They borrowed someone else’s login to check something quickly. They saved a file locally because they couldn’t access the shared drive. They used their personal phone to look up a client number because it was faster.

None of that felt risky. It felt like being resourceful. Like doing what needed to get done on a hectic first day.

But in that first week, before everything is fully in place, a few important things happen quietly. Shared credentials create accounts nobody tracks, files end up outside of your backup systems, a personal device touches your business data, and no one explains what to do if something feels off.

The same Keepnet report found that new employees are 44% more susceptible to phishing than tenured staff. That gap doesn’t come from carelessness. It comes from chaos. When onboarding is chaotic, security becomes optional. That’s the environment the phishing email walks into.

The attack didn’t create the vulnerability. The first day did.

What a prepared first day looks like

Fixing this doesn’t require a long security presentation on day one. It requires three things to be ready before the person walks in the door.

1. Their access is configured, not improvised. That means the laptop is ready, credentials are created and permissions are clearly defined. No borrowing logins, no temporary workarounds and no “we’ll sort that out later this week.”
2. They know what a normal request looks like in your business. 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 training; it’s basic orientation.
3. They have somewhere to ask questions without feeling foolish. The employee who hesitated before clicking that email probably would have asked someone if they’d known who to ask. Most first-week mistakes happen quietly because new hires don’t want to look inexperienced.

Give them a person. Give them a process.

Most security mistakes don’t happen when someone ignores the rules. They happen when someone doesn’t know the rules yet.

Maybe your onboarding is already solid. Maybe your team is small enough that first days feel more personal rather than procedural. But if you’ve ever had a new hire improvise their way through week one — or if you’re planning to bring someone on this spring — it’s worth a conversation before that Tuesday email arrives.

And if you know another business owner who’s about to hire, send this their way. The best time to close that door is before anyone walks through it.