Trend Micro, a cybersecurity solutions provider, has blocked 12.7 million high-risk e-mail threats in 2019 for customers leveraging cloud-based e-mail services from Microsoft and Google.

This second layer of defence caught threats beyond those detected by the cloud e-mail services’ built-in security, according to Trend Micro’s Cloud App Security Roundup report.

“Organisations are leveraging the power of SaaS-based applications in greater numbers to drive productivity, cost savings and growth. However, in doing so they may be opening themselves up to risk if they only rely on built-in security,” said Wendy Moore, vice president, product marketing at Trend Micro.

“Businesses must take ownership of cloud protection and find a multi-layered third-party solution to enhance their platform’s native security functionality,” Moore added.

More than 11 million of the high-risk e-mails blocked in 2019 were phishing related, making up 89 per cent of all blocked e-mails. Of these, Trend Micro detected 35 per cent more credential phishing attempts than in 2018.

Additionally, the number of unknown phishing links in such attacks jumped from just 9 per cent of the total to more than 44 per cent in 2019. This may demonstrate that scammers are registering new sites to avoid detection, the statement said.

The report also shows that criminals are getting better at tricking the first layer of defence against Business E-mail Compromise (BEC) attacks, which typically look at attacker behaviours and intention analysis of the e-mail content. The percentage of BEC attacks caught by AI-powered authorship analysis increased from 7 per cent in 2018 to 21 per cent in 2019.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW