A new report published by IRONSCALES and TechTarget’s Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) has found that despite professionals opting for a variety of communication tools and instant messaging platforms, email is still the biggest cybersecurity concern. The report surveyed almost 500 IT and cybersecurity professionals from public and private sector organisations in the US and Western Europe. The firms found that 38% of respondents still view email as the most vulnerable communication tool in the enterprise environment. The three attacks hackers were most successful in pulling off last year were phishing attacks (34%) and business email compromise (BEC) scams (28%). Pyishing often results in wire transfer fraud, payroll fraud, and payment fraud.
The report also highlighted a lack of comprehensive security awareness training and assessments, with the current email security strategies of almost a quarter (23%) of respondents failing to provide effective training. Without proper human insight, there will always be vulnerabilities, warned Audian Paxson, Director of Technical Product Marketing at IRONSCALES. He claimed companies need to complement their email-security solution with collaborative human insights to effectively thwart emerging threats.
Secureworks reported last March that BEC attacks doubled between January and December 2020, making them the most common type of attack, ahead of ransomware. The company linked the explosive growth in attacks to successful phishing campaigns, which accounted for one third of all incidents where an initial access vector could be established.
The report found that some companies were taking proactive steps to secure their workforce’s most popular communications tool, with more than a third (34%) implementing extra third-party security controls. Almost half (46%) planned on doing so in the next 12 months.
