75% of cyberattacks start with an email, reveals report

A report has revealed that most phishing scams are sent via email, which has increased drastically in the past year

Three-quarters of all cyberattacks begin with phishing, according to a report from Trend Micro, while there has been a 50% increase in malicious actors taking advantage of cloud misconfigurations.

The annual report highlighted that cybercriminals have become good at grabbing opportunities, especially workers growing dependency on email. More than 10 million phishing scams were recorded throughout 2021. Cybercriminals played on the concerns of users and used the most common theme and subject line, which revolved around the pandemic and Covid-19 vaccine.

The report observed a 50% increase in cloud security breaches with cloud-based email threats. This finding was attributed to hacking groups like Team TNT that scoured servers with configuration weaknesses. IT security companies blocked 94 billion threats in just last year, leading Trend Micro to pin the sharp increase in intensity to Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) groups and initial access brokers.

However, the report revealed an 11% decrease in work phishing emails claiming to be from a reputable trusted source like their own CEOs. Vice President of Trend Micro, believes cyber crme has become more precisely targeted, the numbers falling in many critical areas. The decline could also be attributed to new sophistcated tools that verify sources and block suspicious messages. 

Business organisations can regularly remind employees of phishing scams via email and how they can be careful to avoid opening suspicious emails with strange subject lines and links. Morever, by purchasing and installing a trustworthy and good antivirus software, one can secure their data on the cloud and strengthen computer's security.