Banking phishing drove 23% of employee clicks

Netskope said phishing campaigns now rely on counterfeit login pages.

A recent report showed that phishing campaigns aimed at stealing banking credentials accounted for 23% of all clicks by employees in 2025, making banking the most targeted sector, ahead of government at 21%. 

Despite a 27% year-on-year drop in phishing susceptibility, an average of 87 in every 10,000 employees still clicked on a phishing link each month, according to Netskope Threat Labs’ sixth annual threat report released today.

Attackers are increasingly focusing on credential theft as more systems move to the cloud. 

Netskope said phishing campaigns now rely on counterfeit login pages, malicious open authorisation (OAuth) apps, and brand impersonation to bypass passwords and multi-factor authentication. 

Whilst cloud services were the main focus overall, banking logins remained a prime target because a single compromised account can expose wider systems.

The findings also highlight broader data security risks that affect banks directly. The number of attempts by employees to share sensitive information with generative AI tools more than doubled year on year. 

On average, organisations detected 223 monthly attempts by staff to include regulated data, intellectual property, source code, or passwords in AI prompts or uploads. 

Only about half of organisations have data loss prevention tools in place to stop sensitive data leaking through AI applications.

Use of personal tools at work remains another concern. Nearly one in three employees uploaded data to personal cloud applications each month, and 60% of insider threat incidents involved personal cloud use. 

Almost a quarter of organisations lack real-time controls to detect or block data leaks through these platforms.

Netskope said these trends leave banks exposed as attackers exploit trusted platforms and human error. 

The firm warned that whilst phishing and data leakage risks are becoming more complex, many organisations, including those in the financial sector, are still lagging in putting effective controls in place.