Email remains the backbone of business communications with 3.7 billion users worldwide, collectively sending 269 billion messages every day. Because of the widespread use of email, it remains a top target for cybercriminals for breaching enterprise email systems. In fact, email-borne attacks are responsible for more than 93% of breaches, according to Verizon’s Data Breach Investigation Report. While Organizations tend to spend heavily on endpoint and network security solutions they often end up neglecting email security.
Cybercriminals are targeting corporate users more than personal email account holders because there is more to be gained from gaining access to corporate computers with malware, phishing attacks, and impersonations. Cybercriminals know businesses are much more likely to pay ransoms if data are encrypted by ransomware. Google’s own stats show that businesses are 6.2 times as likely to receive phishing emails and 4.3 times as likely to be targeted with malware-infected emails.
With the growing prevalence and success of targeted social engineering attacks, email continues to be an easy entry point for cybercriminals. In fact, the FBI’s 2017 Internet Crime Report indicates that “business email compromise and phishing drive 48 percent of ALL internet crime-driven financial loss – more than all other business-related internet crime combined.” These targeted attacks are referred to by a number of names – spear phishing, business email compromise, impersonation, or credential theft. Particularly concerning are attacks that go from email into core backend systems that contain customer data or even financial access.
Cyber Threat to Enterprise Email Requires New Tactics
“What the research indicates is the threat to enterprise email systems is growing,” says Shawn Waldman, CEO of Secure Cyber Defense. “While cybercriminals are becoming more sophisticated, organizations continue to rely on outdated, perimeter-based approaches to blocking threats.” These solutions are designed to stop the flow of unwanted mail from entering at a single point in time. However, these gateway-based tools are inadequate for detecting attacks that rely on social engineering tactics to fool employees like impersonations, wire transfer requests, W2 requests and business services spoofing that the majority of security professionals report seeing on a weekly basis.
These basic attacks continue to be successful because organizations have traditionally relied on spam filters and email encryption alone to guard against email threats. Today’s modern, cloud-based email systems, require a continuous protection model that can spot highly targeted spear phishing campaigns as well as general malware, providing a system for re-evaluating and remediating email as new threats emerge.
As cybercriminals continue to launch increasingly advanced attacks, email security remains a top priority. Automating detection, remediation and post-incident response allow organizations to protect themselves from today’s sophisticated email threats with greater success than ever before. Smarter email security platforms and secure hosting can ease the administrative burden on IT teams, lessen disruption to employees, and most importantly, significantly reduce data loss and security breaches.
Top Email Security Backed By Top Cybersecurity Experts
While there are a number of IT companies offering secure email products, Secure Cyber Defense beefs up your email security with a securely hosted email server backed by a team of dedicated cybersecurity experts who analyze and develop countermeasures for thousands of potential email-borne threats. Your company benefits from our experience with the most up-to-date threat information and a system that automatically addresses the latest threats so your team doesn’t have to