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A lot of your business emails aren’t useful in any way, says a new report that examines billions of messages.
Hornetsecurity research analyzing 25 billion business emails found that nearly half (40.5%) are “unwanted” and could even pose a serious threat to businesses.
The report also revealed how email remains an incredibly popular threat vector, with the most common types of malicious messages being: phishing attacks – emails pretending to be from well-known companies, sometimes quite convincing – which accounted for 39.6% of all threats.
False sense of security
When it comes to malicious email attachments, archive files such as Zip made up the bulk (28% of messages), followed by web files (HTML) at 21%. Text-based files were also commonly used, with compromised Microsoft Word documents making up 12.7%, PDF 12.4% and Excel 10.4%.
The report also finds that cybercriminals are developing new methods in response to the changing digital landscape. For example, attacks that use the macro capabilities in Microsoft 365 are no longer viable since Microsoft disabled the feature last yearin particular to enhance security.
As a result, new tactics have been adopted. HTML smuggling has increased, incorporating hidden LNK or ZIP files into web links to deploy malware.
Hornetsecurity CEO Daniel Hofmann warned that given the prevalence of cloud-based systems, such as Microsoft 365, their use deserves the same degree of caution. The Hornetsecurity report found that a quarter of respondents were unaware that 365 could be a potential gateway for ransomware – some even thought it was invulnerable to such threats.
“There must be ongoing training to prevent fraudsters from manipulating people’s trust in Microsoft and other office systems,” Hoffman advised. He also specifically mentioned Microsoft Teams, adding that “it is also critical to ensure that all data shared through this platform is backed up.”
Other reports have found a similarly high — or even higher — proportion of spam emails in people’s accounts. For example, recent findings from Kaspersky place the figure between: 45-85%.
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