{"id":346710,"date":"2019-10-16T07:42:14","date_gmt":"2019-10-16T05:42:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=346710"},"modified":"2019-10-21T07:57:54","modified_gmt":"2019-10-21T05:57:54","slug":"report-shows-staggering-increase-in-business-email-compromise-attacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/industry-news\/346710\/report-shows-staggering-increase-in-business-email-compromise-attacks\/","title":{"rendered":"Report shows staggering increase in Business Email Compromise attacks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mimecast, a leading email and data security company, announced the availability of its latest Email Security Risk Assessment (ESRA).<\/p>\n<p>The quarterly assessment is an aggregated report of tests that measure the efficacy of widely used email security systems.<a href=\"#_ftn1\" name=\"_ftnref1\">[<\/a>1]<\/p>\n<p>This <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mimecast.com\/globalassets\/documents\/infographics\/email-security-risk-assessment-infographic.pdf?utm_source=MyBroadband&amp;utm_medium=October_Article\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>quarter\u2019s ESRA report<\/strong><\/a> found a significant increase in Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks, emails containing dangerous file types, malware attachments and spam being delivered to users\u2019 inboxes from incumbent email security systems.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mimecast.com\/globalassets\/documents\/infographics\/email-security-risk-assessment-infographic.pdf?utm_source=MyBroadband&amp;utm_medium=October_Article\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Click here to read this quarter&#8217;s ESRA report on Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks.<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>BEC attacks, also referred to as email-based impersonation fraud, is an issue that is not going away because these attacks can easily evade many traditional email security systems on a global scale. The latest ESRA found a 269% increase in these types of attacks, in comparison to the same findings in last quarter\u2019s report.<\/p>\n<p>This trend was also reflected in recent research, the <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mimecast.com\/the-state-of-email-security-2019\/?utm_source=BusinessTech&amp;utm_medium=October_Article\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>State of Email Security 2019<\/em> report<\/a><\/strong>, which found that 85% of the 1,025 global respondents experienced an impersonation attack in 2018, with 73% of those victims having experienced a direct business impact \u2013 like financial, data or customer loss.<\/p>\n<p>The rise in BEC attacks underscores the need for organisations to add protection against well-resourced attackers.\u00a0 A 2019 Osterman Research Report titled <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mimecast.com\/resources\/analyst-reports\/dates\/2019\/6\/osterman-research-ten-questions-to-ask-about-your-office-365-deployment\/?utm_source=BusinessTech&amp;utm_medium=October_Article\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u201cTen Questions to Ask About Your Office 365 Deployment\u201d<\/a><\/strong>, concluded Microsoft Office 365 alone, \u201cwill not fully meet many organisations\u2019 requirements.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Today, close to half of Mimecast customers bolster the cyber resilience of their Microsoft Office 365 deployments with services including, Targeted Threat Protection to defend against bad actors and BEC attacks.<\/p>\n<p>BEC attacks are not the only method cybercriminals have been successfully leveraging to target organisations.<\/p>\n<p>The ESRA report found 28,783,892 spam emails, 28,808 malware attachments and 28,726 dangerous files types were all missed by incumbent providers and delivered to users\u2019 inboxes, an overall false negative rate of 11% of inspected emails.<\/p>\n<p>The results from the report demonstrate the need for the entire industry to continue to work toward a higher standard of email security.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis ESRA report pointed out that impersonation attacks continue to menace all types of organisations, 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 organisations\u2019 have in place, effectively leaving them vulnerable and putting a lot of pressure on their employees to discern malicious emails,\u201d said Joshua Douglas, vice president of threat intelligence at Mimecast.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCybercriminals 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 &amp; development, unified integrations and making it easier for users to be part of security defences, driving resilience against evolving attacks.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Mimecast produces quarterly ESRA reports to offer organisations insights on the rise of new types of email-borne threats and key trends in malicious email campaigns.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Additional Resources<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Download the <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mimecast.com\/globalassets\/documents\/infographics\/email-security-risk-assessment-infographic.pdf?utm_source=BusinessTech&amp;utm_medium=October_Article\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Email Security Risk Assessment infographic<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Understand the key findings from the <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mimecast.com\/the-state-of-email-security-2019\/?utm_source=press_gl&amp;utm_medium=press&amp;utm_campaign=7011N000001V1mKQAS\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">State of Email Security 2019 report<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For more information, visit <a href=\"https:\/\/www.globenewswire.com\/Tracker?data=oDy-eV_gCGGfS6aHKQgGIAyqa_hkX--1lwIMlar2K8byD_N3MAvsNYwFt3KrCSGOYm3ts4JKU7pL4USZkok1dw==\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>www.mimecast.com<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref1\" name=\"_ftn1\">[1]<\/a> Specific security policy settings and controls of the incumbent email security system are directly managed by the individual customers of these other vendors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New Mimecast ESRA report finds millions of spam, tens of thousands of BEC or impersonation attacks, dangerous file types and malware attachments being delivered to users\u2019 inboxes. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":180659,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10459],"tags":[26,11528],"class_list":["post-346710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry-news","tag-headline","tag-mimecast"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346710"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":346726,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346710\/revisions\/346726"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}