HONOLULU — The fourth and final session in a free cybersecurity Zoom clinic series for Hawai‘i businesses is set for April 22, with organizers using the program to show why phishing remains one of the easiest ways for attackers to break in.
The online clinic, titled “Hook, Line and Sinker: Real Stories of Successful Phishing Attacks,” was scheduled for noon to 1 p.m. via Zoom and is part of a series presented by University of Hawaiʻi Maui College for sole proprietors and registered businesses in Hawai‘i. Jodi Ito said phishing remains the most effective attack method in 2026 because it targets people, and she warned that artificial intelligence is making scams more sophisticated by generating personalized phishing emails that are harder to spot.
The session is backed by $1 million in grants and wraparound support from Google’s Cybersecurity Clinics Fund, money used to establish University of Hawaiʻi Cybersecurity Clinics. The program is one of 15 new clinics launched at higher education institutions nationwide through a collaboration between Google and the Consortium of Cybersecurity Clinics.
That broader push matters because phishing is not a niche technical problem; it is a people problem, and the people being asked to spot it are often running small businesses with limited time to train staff or recover from a mistake. The final clinic tries to make the threat concrete by walking through real attacks rather than treating what is phishing as a textbook definition.
The unanswered question now is how quickly small businesses can adapt to a threat that is getting more tailored by the day, especially as AI gives scammers better-looking lures and more convincing ways to get a click.
