Protect Your Email Communications

VIPRE Security Group has published its yearly email threat landscape report, titled Email Security in 2024: An Expert Look at Email-Based Threats. This comprehensive study is built on an analysis of over seven billion emails in 2023. Out of the seven billion emails analyzed , approximately one billion were found to be malicious. An alarming 276% rise in malware was recorded between January and December of 2023. While the Financial Services sector was identified as the most targeted with phishing and malspam emails accounting for 22% of all attacks, it's crucial to note that government and public sector organizations are also among the heavily targeted sectors. In fact, the government sector follows closely behind IT, healthcare, and education in the list of most targeted sectors. The report highlighted that 71% of phishing emails still utilize links as their primary method of baiting recipients. Among the most frequently spoofed URLs were those of prominent organizations such as Microsoft, Apple, DHL, Google, DocuSign, Amazon, and Dropbox. Furthermore, HTML attachments accounted for 52% of all malicious attachments, with PDFs increasing by 100% and EMLs seeing an astounding 4600% increase. In the last quarter, AgentTesla -- a .NET information stealer -- was responsible for the majority of malware attacks. The report also forecasted several troubling trends for 2024: an increase in QR code hacks, often referred to as quishing; a rise in the use of AI to create content for spam emails, including the use of deepfakes; further growth in highly personalized social media mining; and the widespread use of different file types and formats, particularly EML, to propagate phishing and malware attacks. In addition, a significant rise in state-sponsored attacks is anticipated, which poses a direct threat to government organizations. One particularly concerning finding is the increasing popularity of clean links. These links, designed to appear benign, have a higher success rate in duping users. EML attachments, despite being a consistent threat, saw a tenfold increase in Q4 2023. Due to their novelty, these attachments often bypass basic email security measures and pique users' curiosity, leading to increased engagement and risk for government sectors that may already be operating under significant cybersecurity constraints. AgentTesla, which emerged as the top malware family in Q4 2023, infiltrates target machines and harvests sensitive data from numerous qualifying browsers. Although the delivery of malware via email increased by 276% between January and December 2023, it accounted for only 5% of malspam overall. This indicates that it's easier for threat actors to trick end users than it is to bypass security solutions. While security systems are becoming more adept at identifying and curbing malware, they still lag in countering sophisticated social engineering attacks. Public sector IT leadership should consider contacting GOVonomy to take advantage of its free cyber security evaluation and roadmap creation offering. GOVonomy helps public sector organizations look at cyber security (including email) threats, many of which preventable with the right tools Unfortunately most public and private organizations don't know these tools exist because email doesn't always get the same kind of security attention as the rest of the network. Unfortunately, threat actors know this. Contact the GOVonomy team to schedule a free evaluation of your organizations existing cyber security plan. If no plan exists, GOVonomy team will create one for you – free of charge.