Analysis of Half-a-Billion Emails Reveals Malware-less Email Attacks are on the Rise

FireEye analyzed over half-a-billion emails from 1H 2018, and found that 32% of email traffic seen in the first half of 2018 was considered ‘clean’ and actually delivered to an inbox. Their report also found that 1 in every 101 emails had malicious intent. When compared to the previous six-month period, the changes in both these numbers depict that the email landscape continues to see an increase in email-based threats.

With email security solutions focused on detecting malware, cyber criminals are now adapting their attacks, exposing organizations to malware-less assaults such as CEO fraud. In fact, the majority of attacks blocked (90%) during analysis were malware-less, with phishing attacks alone making up 81% of the blocked malware-less emails, almost doubling from January to June 2018.

Data also indicates that phishing attacks will continue to rise, while impersonation attacks (which were at 19%) remain relatively proportional to the total number of attacks seen. With it only taking one email to potentially impact an entire organization, the protection of this data must be taken seriously.

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