Impact of email threats
Successful email-based attacks faced by organizations in the past year.
3 out of 4 organizations have been a victim of a successful email attack. Email remains the No. 1 threat vector and is the preferred method of attack for cybercriminals. Its popularity is rooted in the high level of success combined with the low level of effort required to launch the attacks.
Impact of successful email attacks on organizations.
Downtime, business disruption, and loss of critical business data top the list, while a third of organizations have reported direct monetary loss to cybercriminals. Only 2% of respondents said that email attacks had no impact on their organization.
Cost of the most expensive email attack reported by organizations in the past year.
The cost of an attack can be devastating for organizations. In fact, 8 in 10 businesses who have experienced an email security incident report they are costing them more than they did 12 months ago. The average cost of the most expensive attack is estimated at around $1 million.
Organizations increased spend on email security in the past year.
As email attacks are becoming more sophisticated and harder to detect, organizations are investing more in security to prevent and respond to such threats. A full 26% of organizations have increased their budgets for email security spend.
Security risks organizations are not fully prepared to deal with
With the high prevalence of email attacks, nearly all 98% still feel under prepared to deal with them. Around a third 34% feels poorly prepared to deal with data loss or malware and 28% feel that they are not even prepared to deal with less complex types of threats such as spam.
