Global cloud-based email management firm Mimecast, in their State of Email Security report, revealed that their study revealed that UAE’s cyber impersonation cases are up by 75%, which caused financial loss for the victims. The report is a result of the aggregate information coming from more than a thousand IT leaders from multinational companies, with UAE representations. Mimecast highlighted the sad news that when it comes to successful impersonation cases, victims had their personal data were stolen, lost customer confidence and financial loss as resulted in fraudulent financial transactions done by the phishers.
With the advent of new attacks such as business email scams, email attacks are attracting attention again. It is said that 91% of cyber attacks are triggered by email, but the most horrible are spear phishing and targeted attacks. Conventional security that uses signatures is difficult to address because there are many cases where it is executed in multiple stages and cases where disposable phishing attempts are used for each target.
Social engineering is huge worldwide, with unsuspecting users unable to determine early enough that a scammer is already capturing their data through multiple channels (social media information, publicly known data and info taken from phishing). On average in the United Arab Emirates, 58% of companies that were victimized by a data breach absorb 3 days of system downtime before returning to normal operations. While about 29% of UAE companies that were victims took 5 days to recover operations.
A phishing email, unlike malware, is characterized by the fact that it depends on the level of target victims to be persuaded by a claim. In other words, if you receive a suspicious email, you need to protect yourself from fake claims it contains, gullible people that can easily be convinced with the user of strong words by the phishers are those that are truly at risk. Email is a useful tool, but it can be exploited like phishing scams and brand reputation damage. It may be said that in order not to be the next victim, it is necessary to take appropriate action based on acceptable norms of not immediately believing a claim unless a strong proof is presented.
“Survey results indicate that vendors need to be able to provide actionable intelligence out of the mass of data they collect, and not just focus on indicators of compromise which would only address past problems. The Mimecast Threat Analysis Center was also able to identify the top 5 industries being impacted by impersonation attacks which closely aligned with the findings in the report,” explained Josh Douglas, Mimecast’s Vice President.
A successful email phishing against someone causes long-term financial damage and lack of peace-of-mind for the victims, and since the perpetrators are unknown, the former cannot bring the case to a court to seek justice. 39% of the surveyed organizations feel that it will take a lot of time to recover from the negative business impact, including brand damage.
“Financial, Manufacturing, Professional Services, Science/Technology as well as Transportation Industries are top targets globally. Understanding these key pain points helps organisations build a more comprehensive cyber resilience plan,” added Douglas.
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