What Statistics Should You Know About For Preventing Phishing Attacks

Irrespective of whether you are a large enterprise or just a small local business, phishing attacks do not spare anyone. Succumbing to a phishing attack implies that your business is losing out on the financial part, reputation, market share, and customer loyalty. Statistics prove that phishing has become one of the most common types of cybercrime today. Equipping yourself with the knowledge on how to beat phishing attacks will aid you in building a strong cybersecurity system. Phishing Statistics and Facts That You Need To UnderstandPhishing Is A Constant Threat: Annual statistics on phishing attacks are quite upsetting. According to a report, over 76% of the companies are prone to phishing attacks annually. So, if your organization hasn’t yet been targeted, remember that it is only an exception and not a rule. According to Symantec’s internet security threat report, emails form about 55% of spam data. The statistics also suggest that a user gets over 16 phishing emails every month. So, even if your business has only 10 employees, they are likely to receive 160 fraudulent emails every month. This number goes up to 1920 harmful emails for the entire year. The Top Choice For Malware Delivery Is An Email: Emails carry about 92.4% of malware with them. No surprises here because it is one of the simplest ways to reach a target. All an attacker needs are one’s own email account and email id of the potential target. Yet, there are some surprises in phishing statistics when it comes to the mode of delivery. According to the stats, malware delivery shifted from attachments to URLs. Previously, over 75% of the malware was being delivered using attachments. Recent times have seen that over 80% of spam emails contain malicious links. Banking trojans are now known to be the most notorious malware. Invoices Form The Most Popular Disguise: Symantec’s internet security threat report also states that over 15.9% of malicious emails use bills and invoices as a disguise for phishing attacks. Preventing phishing attacks is possible by identifying these covers. Disguises in the form of email delivery failure contribute 15.3% to the phishing attacks. Apart from these, other forms of disguise like law enforcement (13.2%), package delivery services (3.9%) and scanned documents (11.5%) continue to strengthen phishing attacks. Dropbox-Related Emails to Lure the Target: Other statistics indicate that over 30% of phishing attacks came from luring the targets using Dropbox related services. Other top lures include offers associated with insurance companies and banks, credential harvesting through generic emails, and Microsoft OWA services amongst the rest. However, the most efficient lure that outdid the Dropbox was DocuSign. Statistics reveal that harmful DocuSignattachments and links were clicked three times more than that of Dropbox. This indicates a 7% click rate in comparison to 2% of Dropbox. Increasing Damage Due To CEO Fraud: This type of fraud is highly sophisticated and is expensive in comparison to any other attack schemes. As per the FBI’s internet crime report, CEO fraud is causing heavy financial burdens to organizations. Statistics prove that being prone to such an attack can cost you $130,000 on an average. Business email compromise (BEC) attacks also features sophisticated targets using tactics like social engineering, computer intrusion, and email spoofing. BEC attacks aim at manipulating the target to sanction unauthorized fund transfers. BEC fools the target that the email is being sent from a trusted partner or from a highly placed executive inside the company. Preventing phishing attacks through state-of-the-art cybersecurity is the best means to save your organization from financial troubles. When it comes to protecting an organization from phishing attacks, simple employee training is not sufficient. You need to employ modern practices and software for fighting against this menace.