The digital association Bitkom estimates the annual damage caused by theft, espionage and sabotage for the German economy at 223 billion euros. A majority of attacks start with social engineering, which includes phishing. ESET Cybersecurity Awareness Training educates and sensitizes employees to potential threats.
One click is enough and it may already be too late. The e-mail looked so deceptively real. The sender's name was correct, the logo, the header and the information contained were company-related. Everything was fine, but it turned out to be a well-crafted phishing email that paralyzed the entire company network. In this case, the loss of data and the brief loss of production were the least of the consequences.
Why is phishing so effective?
Compared to other cyber attacks, phishing often requires very little effort. Sophisticated programming knowledge is hardly necessary. With that in mind, it comes as no surprise that, according to ESET Threat Reports T1 2022, the number of fraudulent emails jumped by 37 percent from January to April compared to the last four months of 2021. The number of phishing URLs blocked increased According to malware researchers, almost as much. The success rate is impressive: According to the Cyberthreat Defense Report from 2021, more than 80 percent of all reported security incidents were attacks with fake e-mails.
Lots of fake email attacks
The fact that the scam works so effectively is due to its “nature”: on the one hand, cyber criminals combine spoofing tactics that enable the criminals to pretend to be legitimate senders. On the other hand, they rely on social engineering techniques that are intended to persuade the recipient to act without first considering the consequences. How can companies protect themselves against this attack vector? The ESET security experts explain this in a recent blog post.
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