Overview

HR and recruitment hold some of an organisation’s most sensitive data, and face threats built specifically around that role. This practical, jargon-free course covers malicious job applications, fraudulent candidates, payroll fraud, your data protection duties for personnel and background-check data, and safe habits for hiring, onboarding and offboarding. Four short units.

Target Audience

HR, people operations and recruitment professionals. No technical background required.

Learning Objectives

Upon completion, learners will gain a full and clear understanding of:

• Why HR and recruitment hold some of the organisation’s most sensitive data
• How to recognise malicious job applications, fraudulent candidates and payroll fraud
• Your specific data protection duties for personnel, background-check and special category data
• Why onboarding and offboarding access control is a security control, not just admin
• How to build verification habits into payroll, hiring and vendor decisions
• How to work confidently with IT and security colleagues on access and incidents

Features and Benefits

• Written for complete beginners: practical, jargon-free and easy to follow.
• Current and fact-checked: researched against up-to-date 2026 sources, including the latest case studies and regulation.
• Four short, focused units with gated progression; each unit unlocks once the previous one is passed.
• Light, formative interactions running through every unit (click-to-reveal, quick knowledge checks and estimate-and-reveal sliders), never scored.
• An end-of-unit quiz that finishes with a marking screen showing which answers were right or wrong, with a short explanation for each.
• Easy retakes: a failed quiz drops the learner straight back into freshly shuffled questions, with no need to click through the unit again.
• Optional audio narration on every screen (the learner chooses to listen), plus narrated motion-graphic video introductions, with captions throughout for accessibility.
• Responsive layout, suitable for PC, tablet and mobile.
• SCORM 1.2 conformant (single SCO); reports completion and an averaged score to any compliant LMS.

Course Contents

Unit 1: HR and Recruitment: A Different Kind of Target

• What a single personnel and candidate file actually contains, including special category data
• Why HR and recruitment data is especially valuable to an attacker
• HR’s role as a data controller in practice
• The wide, semi-public attack surface recruitment creates by design

Unit 2: The Threats That Target HR and Recruitment

• Malicious CVs and portfolios, including a 2025 case targeting recruiters directly
• Fraudulent candidates and remote-worker schemes, including a 2025 case study
• Payroll fraud and how it differs from vendor invoice scams
• Recruitment-specific social engineering: the fake recruiter and the fake candidate

Unit 3: Your Data Protection Duties in Practice

• The extra rules for special category and criminal record/DBS data
• Right to work checks and the current £45,000/£60,000 civil penalty rates
• Access control inside HR, and at onboarding
• Why offboarding access removal is a security control, with a real case study

Unit 4: Safe Habits for Everyday HR and Recruitment

• A verification habit for any bank-detail or payroll change request
• Practical habits for verifying candidates and handling CVs safely
• Vetting the agencies and vendors you work with
• A personal and team checklist bringing the course together