1 in 50 Emails are Malicious

By: Paul Wartenberg | Category: Blog, Security Wednesday, August 29th, 2018 | No Comments

A recent study by Mimecast of 10,072,682 emails, exposed 203,000 malicious links that had been cleared as “safe” by security systems – a disturbing ratio of one unstopped malicious link for every 50 emails inspected.

The Mimecast report also revealed an 80% increase in impersonation attacks in comparison to last quarters’ report with 41,605 caught. In addition, 19,086,877 pieces of spam, 13,176 emails containing dangerous file types, and 15,656 malware attachments were all missed by anti-virus providers and delivered to users’ inboxes.

“Targeted malware, heavily socially-engineered impersonation attacks, and phishing threats are still reaching employee inboxes. This leaves organizations at risk of a data breach and financial loss,” said Matthew Gardiner, cybersecurity strategist at Mimecast. “Our latest quarterly analysis saw a continued attacker focus on impersonation attacks quarter-on-quarter. These are difficult attacks to identify without specialized security capabilities, and this testing shows that commonly used systems aren’t doing a good job catching them.”

Mimecast also uncovered:

19M+ pieces of spam missed by incumbent providers and delivered to users’ inboxes
13,100+ dangerous file types missed by incumbent providers and delivered to users’ inboxes
15,600+ malware attachments missed by incumbent providers and delivered to users’ inboxes

EnhancedTECH recommends a multi-layered approach to email security so you can focus on your business instead of worrying about technology. If you are interested in a cybersecurity assessment for your business give us a call at 714-970-9330 or contact us at [email protected]