Email threats against global businesses grew 64% in 2020 because of remote working
21 April, 2021
Email threats against global businesses surged by more than 64 % on an annualised basis this past year, spurred by an instant shift to remote working amid the Covid-19 pandemic, a survey suggests.
London cyber-security company Mimecast released its State of Email Security report on Tuesday.
It said hackers were quick to take benefit of users' weak security systems and employees’ vulnerability to simply clicking malicious links embedded in the emails.
Mimecast didn't disclose the precise number of email attacks against businesses this past year.
“These exposure points are inflamed by so many companies rapidly adopting digital office models,” said Josh Douglas, vice president of threat intelligence at Mimecast.
"Leaving employees untrained and unprotected in this highly distributed digital environment puts organisations at risk of digital deception."
The coronavirus pandemic led to a huge shift in workplace patterns this past year, with offices switching to remote working to stem the spread of the pandemic.
Some workers have returned with their offices but infection surges have kept others around the world shut or at half capacity.
Employees are also clicking on three times as much malicious emails as they had before the pandemic, the report showed.
Mimecast commissioned research company Vanson Bourne to conduct a worldwide survey of just one 1,225 information technology and cyber-security professionals.
They came from the united states, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, South Africa, the UAE, Canada, Sweden and Denmark.
Participants from the companies - which ranged from 250 to 500 employees - were interviewed in February and March.
The report will not disclose the quantity of respondents surveyed in each country.
The report also showed that the number of ransomware attacks rose globally as a result of working from home.
Ransomware is malware that encrypts a victim's files. The attacker then demands a ransom to revive the user's access.
Globally, almost 61 per cent of the surveyed companies were afflicted by a ransomware attack last year.
About half (52 %) of these paid the ransom but of these, only two thirds recovered their data.
Companies that experienced an attack lost an average of six business days, the report said.
In the UAE, 78 % of the companies polled said these were affected by a ransomware attack this past year.
Nearly 43 % of victims in the UAE also admitted paying the ransom, but only 44 % of those could actually recover their data.
“Many companies opting for to pay ransoms instead of risking extensive business downtime and expensive consulting service fees to conduct self-remediation," Mr Douglas said.
"But this introduces its group of risks, including threat actors not holding up their end of the bargain."
Paying ransom also makes companies “an attractive target for subsequent attacks, since they have demonstrated they are prepared to pay”, he said.
Almost 71 per cent of the businesses surveyed globally are also worried about the safety of their archived business record of conversations, in tools such as for example Slack or Teams.
Nearly 70 % of global respondents assume that employee failings such as weak passwords are putting their companies at risk.
Only 50 per cent of the firms surveyed in the UAE consider employees’ naivety to be one of their biggest vulnerabilities.
Source: www.thenationalnews.com
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