Three-quarters of organizations experience successful email-borne attacks
New research released today by Barracuda shows 75 percent of organizations surveyed have experienced a successful email-borne attack in the last 12 months.
What's more the study, carried out by Vanson Bourne, finds recovering from an email-borne security attack costs victims more than $1 million on average and 69 percent of those hit by ransomware say the attack started with an email.
The fallout from an email attack can be significant. The most widely reported effects are downtime and business disruption (affecting 44 percent of those that had been hit), the loss of sensitive, confidential, and business-critical data (43 percent), and damage to brand reputation (41 percent).
Financial services organizations are particularly affected by the loss of valuable data and money to attackers (cited by 59 percent and 51 percent of victims, respectively), while in manufacturing the top impact is the disruption of business operations (53 percent). For healthcare institutions the recovery costs involved in getting systems up and running again quickly are the most significant (44 percent). Regardless of size or industry, however, the report shows organizations with more than half their employees working remotely face higher levels of risk and recovery costs.
"Email is a trusted and ubiquitous communications channel, and that makes it an attractive target for cybercriminals. We expect email-based attacks to become increasingly sophisticated, leveraging AI and advanced social engineering in their attempts to get the data or access they want and evade security measures," says Don MacLennan, SVP, engineering and product management, email protection at Barracuda. "Email-based attacks can be the initial access point for a wide range of cyberthreats, including ransomware, information stealers, spyware, crypto mining, other malware, and more. It is not surprising that IT teams around the world don't feel fully prepared to defend against many email-based threats. Growing awareness and understanding of email risks and the robust protection needed to stay safe will be key in keeping organizations and their employees protected in 2023 and beyond."
The full report is available from the Barracuda site.
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