over one-third of all security incidents start with phishing emails or malicious attachments sent to company employees, according to a new report published today by global cybersecurity firm F-Secure.
The cybersecurity advisory’s new findings from its incident response investigations provide insights into how real hackers attack organizations. The single most common source of breaches analyzed in the report was attackers exploiting vulnerabilities in an organization’s internet-facing services, which accounted for about 21 percent of security incidents investigated by F-Secure’s incident responders. But phishing and emails with malicious attachments together accounted for about 34 percent of breaches, which F-Secure Principal Security Consultant Tom Van de Wiele says make attacks arriving via email a much bigger pain point for organizations.
“Exploiting software vulnerabilities in drive-by scenarios are typical in opportunistic attacks, but breaching companies via email is actually far more common. There’s a lot of different ways different attackers can use email, and these attacks are popular because almost every company relies on email for communication,” Wiele said. “People need to think before they click on attachments and links, but the pressures of many jobs override this logic, which attackers understand and exploit.”
Other significant findings in the report revealed that organizations were hit by targeted and opportunistic attacks in nearly equal proportion to one another. Further, insider threats accounted for one-fifth of security incidents while 13 percent of investigations turned out to be false alarms. Similarly, incident responders were contacted after the security perimeter was breached in nearly 80 percent of cases. However, the most common post-breach action taken by attackers was spreading malware says a press release by F-Secure.
According to Wiele, the number of false alarms reported as security incidents are surprising, and shows that too many organizations struggle with accurately detecting cyber attacks. The report recommends companies improve their incident detection and response capabilities, such as by investing in an endpoint detection and response solution or service.
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