Young workers are the most vulnerable to phishing scams, according to a new global survey on cybersecurity readiness, which also highlights growing anxiety about artificial intelligence–driven attacks.
The study, commissioned by Swedish-American security company Yubico and carried out by Talker Research, polled 18,000 employees across nine countries including the UK, US, France, Germany, Japan, India, and Australia. It found that 62% of Gen Z respondents admitted to interacting with a phishing message in the past year, compared with 44% of the workforce overall.
Ronnie Manning, Yubico’s Chief Brand Advocate, said the findings underscored a “disconnect” between awareness of cyber threats and the security practices used in both workplaces and personal accounts. “It’s not surprising that phishing continues to be one of the easiest ways for hackers to get in,” he said, calling for stronger authentication, wider adoption of phishing-resistant technology, and better training.
The survey comes against the backdrop of October’s Cybersecurity Awareness Month and a sharp rise in security breaches linked to AI. Seven in ten respondents said they believed phishing attempts had become more successful because of AI tools, while 78% said attacks had grown more sophisticated. When presented with a phishing email, more than half of participants were unable to identify it as fraudulent.
Despite rising concern, traditional passwords remain the dominant means of authentication, with 56% using them for work accounts and 60% for personal accounts. Less than half of companies surveyed use multi-factor authentication (MFA) across all applications, and two-fifths of employees said they had never received cybersecurity training at work.
The results varied sharply by country. In France, personal adoption of MFA jumped from 29% in 2024 to 71% in 2025, suggesting a shift in user behaviour. Concern about AI threats also surged, with Japan showing the largest increase, from 31% last year to 74% this year. In the UK, 81% of respondents said they were worried about AI-enabled attacks, up from 61% in 2024.
At the same time, confidence in hardware-based authentication, such as security keys and passkeys, is growing. In the UK, 37% of participants said they viewed these tools as the most secure form of login, more than double the proportion last year.
Yubico, listed on Nasdaq Stockholm, is best known for its YubiKey, a hardware device designed to provide phishing-resistant authentication. Manning said the company was seeing momentum behind such technologies: “Modern MFA is clearly no longer just ‘nice to have’ and has quickly become essential for staying secure in our rapidly changing digital landscape.”
There’s plenty of other editorial on our sister site, Electronic Specifier! Or you can always join in the conversation by visiting our LinkedIn page.
