Malware Report: The Number of Unique Phishing Emails in Q4 Rose by 36%

Malware Report: The Number of Unique Phishing Emails in Q4 Rose by 36% With nearly 280 million phishing emails detected by just one vendor, and the increase in the number of unique emails, organizations have a lot to be worried about in 2023.

I want to start with some context around this stat. This article is not about the number of phishing emails detected (that is the total number sent out), this is the number of unique emails. Meaning, you can multiply each email by some number more than one and you begin to realize the sheer magnitude of the problem.

In Vade Secure’s Q4 2022 Phishing and Malware Report, we see some disturbing trends around phishing:

December of 2022 had the highest volume of unique phishing emails ever at over 169 million
Second place is October of 2022 with just 62.3 million emails
Q4 of 2022 saw a 12% increase in email volumes containing malware, totaling 55.8 million emails

These growth numbers are concerning because it means that the total number of attacks that are bypassing security solutions and reaching inboxes is going to increase. It underscores the importance of adopting a multi-layered approach to security, that includes Security Awareness Training as part of your prevention strategy to manage the ongoing issue of phishing emails.

Live Demo: Identify and Respond to Email Threats Faster with PhishER

With only approximately 1 in 10 user-reported emails being verified as actually malicious, how do you not only handle the phishing attacks and threats—and just as importantly—effectively manage the other 90% of user-reported messages accurately and efficiently? PhishER.

To learn how, get a product demonstration of the new PhishER Security Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR) platform. In this live one-on-one demo we will show you how easy it is to identify and respond to email threats faster:

Automate prioritization of email messages by rules you set that categorize messages as Clean, Spam, or Threat

Augment your analysis and prioritization of messages with PhishML, a PhishER machine-learning module

Search, find, and remove email threats with PhishRIP, PhishER’s new email quarantine feature for Microsoft 365 and G Suite

NEW! Automatically flip active phishing attacks into safe simulated phishing campaigns with PhishFlip. You can even replace active phishing emails with safe look-alikes in your user’s inbox.

Easily integrate with KnowBe4's email add-in button, Phish Alert, or forwarding to a mailbox works too!