Throughout 2022, Barracuda Networks discovered around 30 million spearphishing emails in 50 billion emails across 3.5 million mailboxes.
According to the report, half of the over 1,000 organizations examined were victims of targeted attacks. In addition, a fifth of the firms had at least one compromised email account as a result of account takeovers.
Scamming is the most prevalent sort of attack, accounting for 47% of all assaults in which victims are duped into providing personal information for fraudulent reasons. Brand imitation came in second, accounting for 42% of all attacks. In this scenario, attackers use well-known brands to dupe consumers and steal login information. Business email compromise accounts for 8% of assaults, in which attackers pose as trustworthy persons in order to trick victims into engaging in illicit activities or revealing sensitive financial information.
Extortion accounts for 3% of assaults, in which victims get threatening emails demanding cooperation to prevent personal information from being exposed. Conversation hijacking is the least prevalent sort of assault, accounting for only 0.3% of all attacks. According to the report, 57% of spearphishing victims use Gmail as their email platform, while 41% use Microsoft 365.
The sources for this piece include an article in TechRepublic.