“Dangerous URLs are increasingly slipping past email security.

Although email providers do their utmost to detect dangerous URLs, they are less and less successful in doing so. The number of unblocked e-mails with links to dangerous websites rose by no less than 125 percent in the past quarter. This is what Mimecast says in the latest edition of its Email Security Risk Assessment (ESRA).

In the report, Mimecast evaluates the effectiveness of popular email security systems. According to the company, the report helps companies understand what types of email threats are passing through their current security system.

Malicious websites

Attackers are increasingly using fake websites to steal personal or bank details. The sites are indistinguishable from reality, which makes it easier to entice a user to visit the sites and to leave information behind. Mimecast discovered 463,456 malicious URLs in the more than 28 million e-mails delivered and labelled as ‘safe’ by the systems of large e-mail providers. This is an average of one malicious URL per 61 passed emails.

But other dangerous messages also slipped past the security systems of email providers. Mimecast also mentions the 24,908,891 spam messages, 26,713 malware attachments, 53,753 impersonation attacks and 23,872 dangerous file types. But above all, there was an increase in the number of attacks with fake URLs. 45 percent of the more than a thousand respondents report that the number of URL-based attacks and attacks with malicious attachments has increased significantly over the past year.

Integrated solution

In addition to the increase in malicious URLs, the growth in the number of impersonation attacks is also alarming. The ESRA report shows an increase of 27 percent compared to the previous quarter. According to the survey, 41 percent of the respondents saw an increase in this phenomenon. Attackers pretend to be business partners or sellers, trying to steal money or sensitive information. According to 38%, there was an increasing amount of abuse of well-known persons and large Internet brands.

According to Mimecast, it is therefore important that companies adopt an integrated solution to secure both e-mail and the web. After all, e-mails with credible content and a link to a rogue website concern both the web and an e-mail.