Security teams struggle to combat image-based and QR code attacks

Over 70 percent of respondents to a new survey say they feel their current security stack is highly effective against image-based and QR code phishing, however, 76 percent report being compromised by these types of attacks within the past year.

The study of 300 IT and security professionals across a variety of industries and geographies, from Osterman Research for IRONSCALES, shows almost 93 percent of IT and security professionals are aware of image-based phishing attacks targeting their organizations, and nearly 79 percent say the same about QR code attacks.

Less than six percent are able to consistently detect and prevent these attacks from reaching user inboxes. And with 60 percent of surveyed professionals expecting the number, sophistication, and evasiveness of such attacks to worsen in the near future, this underscores a need to bolster organizational defenses against this evolving digital threat.

The research also reveals a significant portion of organizations face challenges related to the human element -- with 76 percent of organizations conceding that their existing training programs are inadequate in equipping users to recognize and resist these threats.

While QR code attacks have received a good deal of publicity, this new report makes clear that image-based phishing represents a much broader, more complex challenge. Increasingly, threat actors are using novel techniques to create images that appear to be traditional text-based emails, which allows them to circumvent traditional security solutions.

"In the face of the escalating frequency and complexity of image-based phishing attacks, traditional email security measures are proving to be increasingly insufficient. These sophisticated attacks exploit the nuanced vulnerabilities of human perception and our existing cybersecurity frameworks, making them particularly challenging to detect and prevent," says Eyal Benishti, CEO of IRONSCALES. "Our latest research with Osterman highlights this urgent challenge, underscoring the necessity for a paradigm shift towards more adaptive and intelligent email security solutions that can keep pace with the innovative tactics of cybercriminals."

You can get the full report from the IRONSCALES site.

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