Mimecast’s report reveals a significant increase in the Business Email Compromise attacks.
Mimecast has released its latest Email Security Risk Assessment (ESRA). The quarterly assessment is an aggregated report of tests that measure the efficacy of widely used email security systems. This quarter’s ESRA report found a significant increase in Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks, emails containing dangerous file types, malware attachments and spam being delivered to users’ inboxes from incumbent email security systems.
The latest ESRA found a 269% increase in these types of attacks, in comparison to the same findings in last quarter’s report. This trend was also reflected in recent research, the State of Email Security 2019 report, which found that 85% of the 1,025 global respondents experienced an impersonation attack in 2018, with 73% of those victims
This ESRA report pointed out that impersonation attacks continue to menace all types of organizations, but I think the real issue is that there are tens of thousands email-borne threats successfully able to bypass the email security systems that organizations’ have in place, effectively leaving them vulnerable and putting a lot of pressure on their employees to discern malicious emails. Cybercriminals will always look for new ways to bypass traditional defences and fool users. This means the industry must focus their efforts on investing in research & development, unified integrations and making it easier for users to be part of security defences, driving resilience against evolving attacks”
Joshua Douglas, Vice President of Threat Intelligence, Mimecast.
