With attackers knowing financial fraud-based phishing attacks are best suited for the one industry where the money is, this massive spike in attacks should both surprise you and not surprise you at all.
When you want tires, where do you go? Right – to the tire store. Shoes? Yup – shoe store. The most money you can scam from a single attack? That’s right – the financial services industry, at least according to cybersecurity vendor Armorblox’s 2023 Email Security Threat Report.
According to the report, the financial services industry as a target has increased by 72% over 2022, and was the single largest target of financial fraud attacks, representing 49% of all such attacks. When breaking down the specific types of financial fraud, it doesn’t get any better for the financial industry:
- 51% of invoice fraud attacks targeted the financial services industry
- 42% of payroll fraud attacks
- 63% of payment fraud
To make matters worse, nearly one-quarter (22%) of financial fraud attacks successfully bypassed native email security controls, according to Armorblox. That means 1 in 5 email-based attacks made it all the way to the Inbox. The next layer in your defense should be a user that’s properly educated using Security Awareness Training to easily identify financial fraud and other phishing-based threats, stopping them before they do actual damage.
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