Business Email Fraud Attempts Spike

Companies are facing more email fraud attacks than ever before.  In fact, studies show that email fraud attacks have risen 25% per targeted company from last quarter.

Email fraud attacks work by impersonating someone the recipient knows and trusts, requesting sensitive information, a transfer of money, or other seemingly regular business requests.  However, when the recipient responds, they are giving the attacker valuable company information or funds.

These types of business email compromise attempts have increased 36% across the board.  Organizations in retail, healthcare, and the government were most frequently targeted for these types of attacks.

Upper management receives more than their fair share of these email fraud attacks.  Regular employees receive 60% of these malware, phishing, or other email based attacks.  However, this still leaves upper management with a disproportionately high amount of email attacks, considering that there are small number of executives in upper management.

Nearly 11% of the fraudulent emails studied were ransomware attacks, which shows an increase in ransomware after its sharp decline in 2017.  Domain fraud was another major issue.  This attack requires the hacker to create a “lookalike domain” that carries out email fraud, tricking not only employees, but customers as well.

Story via Threat Post