The scale, sophistication and impact of phishing attacks have all reached unprecedented levels due to the work-from-home trend necessitated by the Coronavirus pandemic. Seventy-four percent of all IT professionals surveyed in a recent study responded that their company had fallen victim to a phishing attack over the past year, with 40 percent indicating that such an attack had taken place within the past month.
Eighty percent of the IT staff surveyed by the IT security company Ivanti stated that they had witnessed a rising number of phishing attacks. According to 85 percent, the attacks had also become increasingly sophisticated. A remarkable 73 percent of the respondents said that their own IT staff had been targeted by phishing attacks – and that 47 percent of those attacks had been successful. Defending the organization against such attacks has been hampered by the ongoing shortage of IT staff, a problem that more than half of the respondents (52 percent) claimed was a significant challenge for their organizations.
Thirty-seven percent of those surveyed cited two major reasons why phishing attacks succeeded: a lack of technical means of countering the attacks and insufficient staff training. Thirty-four percent cited a lack of end-user knowledge and understanding as a primary cause. While many companies did in fact offer the necessary cybersecurity training, it was only seldom the case that these courses were attended across the board by the vast majority of employees.
For the study, Ivanti surveyed more than 1,000 enterprise IT workers across Germany, France, the UK, the USA, Australia, and Japan during April and May 2021. If you are interested in viewing an infographic on this topic, it can be downloaded here as a PDF.
The outcomes of the study underline that when it comes to safeguarding enterprise email accounts, whether on-premises or in the cloud, it is essential to have a highly comprehensive email security solution with a powerful phishing filter – also as a way of complementing cloud office software such as Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. Enjoy our free-of-charge anti-phishing guide in five languages to inform and prepare your employees regarding this crucial yet persistant challenge.
You can find out more about this topic on our website or directly from your local Retarus representative.
