With attackers knowing financial services fraud-based phishing attacks are best suited for the one industry where the money is, this massive spike in attacks should not come as a surprise.
When you want tires, where do you go? To the tire store. Shoes? Yup – the 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% were payroll fraud attacks
- 63% were 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 through 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 damage.
