Email threat types: Lateral phishing

A recent study revealed that 1 in 7 organizations has experienced a lateral phishing attack.  In this type of attack, criminals use recently hijacked accounts to send phishing emails to the victims' contacts.  Lateral phishing tends to have a high success rate because the attacks come from a legitimate email account that is familiar to the victim.

Lateral phishing is usually an internal attack, which means that email gateways will not detect this threat.  An email security gateway can only stop an attack that passes through it.  APIs for inbox defense offer protection and post-delivery remediation against lateral phishing and other internal threats. 

 Roughly 11 percent of lateral phishing attacks successfully manage to compromise additional accounts, leading to even more lateral phishing attacks. 

Lateral phishing is one of the threats identified in our free e-book, 13 Email Threats to Know About Right Now.  Download your copy and learn more about how these threats work and how you can protect your organization.

 

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