Business Email Compromise attacks still on the rise

Moreover, emails containing dangerous file types, malware attachments, and spam being delivered to users’ inboxes from incumbent email security systems, are also big concerns for businesses.

The latest ESRA found a 269% increase in BEC attacks, in comparison to the same findings in last quarter’s report. This trend was reflected in recent research, the State of Email Security 2019 report, which found that 85% of the 1,025 global respondents experienced an impersonation attack in 2018, with 73% of those victims having experienced a direct business impact – like financial, data, or customer loss.

BEC attacks are not the only method cybercriminals have been successfully leveraging to target organisations. The ESRA report found 28,783,892 spam emails, 28,808 malware attachments and 28,726 dangerous files types were all missed by incumbent providers and delivered to users’ inboxes, an overall false negative rate of 11% of inspected emails.

The results from the report demonstrate the need for the entire industry to continue to work toward a higher standard of email security. Mimecast produces quarterly ESRA reports to offer organisations insights on the rise of new types of email-borne threats and key trends in malicious email campaigns.