Impersonation Attacks Rise 12 Percent in Q3 2023 

Faced with an ever-changing threat landscape, IT administrators, executives, and even end-users can benefit from global insights on cyber resilience. The problem is with so many resources to choose from, security practitioners often don’t know where to look for the resources that can help.

Mimecast is stepping in to fill this gap by providing its Global Threat Intelligence Report. This report, covering the third quarter of 2023, is designed to deliver to organizations of any size the key insights needed to protect their communications, people, and data.

Threat Intelligence Key Findings 

In the current reporting period, readers will discover:

• Zero-day attacks are on the rise and clouds are being attacked more frequently.
• Impersonation attacks are also on the rise, and medium-sized firms have been a special focus of attackers. 
• Human resource firms, information technology software and services, and financial services (especially banking) saw the most threats per user.
• PDFs are still the most common type of dangerous attachment, though Excel formats are on the rise.
• One of the most successful attacks observed this period uses a five-year-old flaw that has yet to be patched by some organizations, indicating a hard truth also delivered in the report, which is that cybercriminals are exploiting known vulnerabilities to launch attacks far faster than most organizations can patch their systems.

The report also delivers insight on the fact that companies using cloud email services — such as Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace — see fewer attacks than those using on-premises email servers, but that companies using third-party email security solutions improved performance even further.

And perhaps one of the most interesting insights discovered this reporting period is that companies recognize the need to close gaps in native security services, with 94% of security leaders seeking better security protections than those that come with their cloud email services. The report also delivers the news that Mimecast was the best performing email security solution, with its users submitting 22% fewer cybersecurity insurance claims than the average organization.

A Threat Intelligence Report Designed to Deliver Key Insights

The new report from Mimecast distills insights from the intelligence generated throughout the three-month period by our products and research team, and combine it with the most relevant external intelligence from the cybersecurity community. The report will include in-depth analysis of threat activity, a series of top-line statistics that shaped the activity, as well as recommendations for what organizations can do to mitigate the risk those threats pose. 

As our latest report states, “Mimecast generates threat intelligence through its analysis of more than a billion emails per day on behalf of more than 42,000 customers. Because email is the channel through which most cyber threats launch, Mimecast sees many new threats before they become widely known.”

Read the Full Report

We invite you to explore our Q3 2023 threat intelligence report and look forward to sharing more insights in the future.