Despite the fact that professional users choose a wide variety of communication tools and instant messaging platforms, email still remains the biggest cybersecurity concern.
This is according to the report “Tackling SaaS Communication and Collaboration Security Challenges: Trends and Strategies for Enterprises” published by IRONSCALES and TechTarget’s Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG).
After surveying nearly 500 IT and cybersecurity professionals from private and public sector organizations in the US and Western Europe, the two companies found that 38% of respondents still consider email to be the most vulnerable communication and collaboration tool in the business environment.
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Persistent gaps
Phishing attacks (34%) and business email compromise (BEC) scams, which often result in wire transfer, payroll and payment fraud (28%), were the three attacks that hackers were most successful at carrying out last year.
Despite everyone’s investments and other efforts to prioritize email security, the report further argues that “persistent gaps” remain. It found that 23% of current email security strategies do not include comprehensive security training.
For Audian Paxson, Technical Product Marketing Manager at IRONSCALES, this is the key problem, as without proper human insight, there will always be vulnerabilities.
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“This research highlights the reality that technology can’t do much to protect against advanced phishing and BEC attacks,” said Paxson. “Native tools can provide some useful basic measures, but stopping advanced phishing attacks requires a more sophisticated set of tools.”
Businesses recognize that to thwart emerging threats, particularly those leveraging social engineering and artificial intelligence, they must complement AI-based email security solutions with collaborative human insights.
Additionally, a quarter of respondents are constantly wary of inbound email attacks that successfully bypass email security solutions.
Indeed, a separate report published in March by Secureworks states that BEC attacks doubled between January and December 2022, making them the most prevalent type of attack, surpassing ransomware.
The company believes that this explosive increase in BEC attacks is rooted in successful phishing campaigns, which account for 33% of incidents where an initial access vector can be created. A year ago, phishing accounted for only 13% of incidents.
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Some companies are taking proactive steps to secure their workforce’s most popular communication tool: more than a third (34%) have implemented additional third-party security controls, while almost half (46%) plan to do so within the next 12 months.
Information source: techradar.com
