Email security beyond the gateway

Phishing attacks have now reached epidemic proportions. It’s estimated that over 35 billion phishing attacks were launched globally in 2018. Think about that - that’s almost five phishing attacks for every man, woman, and child on the planet!

Compounding the problem further is a new breed of phishing attack based on social engineering. Social engineering attacks are much more difficult to detect because they don’t have the typical signatures like malicious file attachments or suspect URLs that traditional email defenses were originally designed to thwart. As a result, these social engineering attacks can bypass traditional email defenses and wreak havoc on small, medium and larger businesses alike. In fact, it’s estimated that the average cost of recovery from a successful social engineering attack in 2018 was $3.5 million which means that if you are a small to mid-size company a single attack could literally put you out of business.

To further complicate matters, it’s estimated that 97% of people can’t even detect a well-crafted social engineering email when it lands in their mailbox – so most people are essentially blind when it comes to detecting and reporting these types of attacks.

These 3 factors have created a perfect storm that makes email security awareness training an essential component of any email security defense strategy.

Traditional defense mechanisms are simply no longer enough to deal with the scale and complexity of social engineering attacks. As a result, companies must train their employees to detect and report social engineering attacks before they can do irreparable damage.

Email security awareness training transforms your employees from a potential security liability into a critical last line of human defense beyond the gateway.  This significantly lowers the risk of sensitive data theft, financial loss and brand damage to your company.

For additional information on how you can provide your organization with an extra layer of email security defense beyond the gateway, please visit the Barracuda PhishLine website.