Latest Tactics Used By Cybercriminals To Bypass Traditional Email Security

Cybercriminals are continuously using new strategies to get past email security gateways, with brand impersonation being used in 83 percent of spear-phishing attacks, while 1 in 3 business email compromise attacks are launched from Gmail accounts.

Sextortion scams, a form of blackmail that makes up 10 percent of all spear-phishing attacks, continue to increase. Employees are also twice as likely to be the target of blackmail than business email compromise.

These are the key findings from a report with the title Spear Phishing: Top Threats and Trends released by Barracuda. Researchers evaluated more than 360,000 spear-phishing emails in a three-month period, identifying and analyzing three major types of attacks: brand impersonation, business email compromise, and blackmail.