A Growing Menace
2018 saw a continuation of companies moving toward cloud-based
email systems. Phishing incidents targeting those systems followed
suit. Fully one-third of incidents addressed by our incident
response team in 2018 involved unauthorized access to an online
email account.
Phishing attacks continued to dominate the types of cyberattacks
organizations experienced in 2018, owed, in no small part, to
phishing's low sophistication, easy replication and high
profitability for the hackers. Attackers routinely defraud
organizations with spoofing emails requesting phony wire transfers
or switching the bank information for employees' or
vendors' direct deposit accounts. Employees acting on
fraudulent requests risk the loss of thousands, and in some cases
millions, of dollars, not to mention the cost of forensic
investigations, notifications to individuals and regulators, and
reputational fallout.
