Mimecast has released its latest Email Security Risk Assessment (ESRA). The quarterly assessment is an aggregated report of tests that measure the efficacy of widely used email security systems. This quarter’s ESRA report found a significant increase in Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks, emails containing dangerous file types, malware attachments and spam being delivered to users’ inboxes from incumbent email security systems.
The latest ESRA report has found a 269% increase in these types of attacks, in comparison to the same findings in last quarter’s report. This trend was also reflected in recent research, the State of Email Security 2019 report, which found that 85% of the 1,025 global respondents experienced an impersonation attack in 2018, with 73% of those victims having experienced a direct business impact – like financial, data or customer loss.