“Number of impersonation attacks increased by 70 percent.

The number of impersonation attacks worldwide has increased by almost 70% in just one year. Mimecast states this in its annual State of Email Security report (pdf), which is based on research among 1,025 IT decision-makers.

According to the report, impersonation attacks are 67 percent more common than a year ago. In these attacks, cybercriminals pretend to be someone else in order to mislead a target. In the past year, almost three quarters of the organisations affected suffered damage as a result of such an attack. This was in the form of customer loss (28 percent), financial loss (29 percent) and data loss (40 percent).

Attacks via e-mail therefore remain dangerous, according to the investigation. Six out of ten, for example, expect attacks via this medium to have a negative impact on business operations in the coming year as well. Phishing attacks are the most common: 94 percent were victims of this in the past year. More than half of them also saw an increase in the number of phising-in attacks.

Ransomware attacks are still common. According to Mimecast, the number of ransomware attacks that disrupt business operations rose by more than a quarter. As a result of such an attack, about half of those surveyed experienced two to three days of downtime. At a third, it was no less than four to five days.

The Netherlands

Mimecast also conducted his research among Dutch IT decision-makers, and came to several striking conclusions. For example, 32.6 percent of Dutch organisations report reputational damage as a result of impersonation attacks via e-mail. This is above average compared to the global number (26 percent). Dutch organisations, however, are less likely to report direct financial loss and data loss.

In addition, only 37 percent of Dutch companies have a cyberresilience strategy, compared to more than 46 percent worldwide. 19 percent plan to roll out such a strategy in the coming year, while 10 percent plan to do so later. 24% are already in the process of rolling out the strategy.

It is striking, however, that a large proportion of Dutch organisations report damage as a result of a lack of resilience against cyber attacks and malfunctions. In 36 percent of the cases, for example, employees are less productive, in 30 percent of the cases there is a loss of data. We also provide fewer award training courses than the global average. Here it is 16 percent, compared to more than a quarter worldwide.