Phishing attacks continue to grow in volume and complexity

According to new research from Wombat Security Technologies, phishing attacks continue to grow in volume and complexity, supported by more aggressive social engineering practices that make phishing more difficult to prevent.

Survey respondents reported that they have experienced malware infections (42%), compromised accounts (22%) and loss of data (4%) due to successful phishing attacks. The resulting loss of employee productivity and uncontained credential compromise can cost an average size organization USD 3.77 million per year.

Findings indicate that e-mails personalized with a first name (spear phishing) had click rates 19% higher than those with no personalization. The results show that click rates vary per industry, with telecommunications and professional services clicking phishing e-mails more than other industries, while organizations use a variety of security technologies, including e-mail spam filters (99%), outbound proxy protection (56%), advanced malware analysis (50%) and URL wrapping (24%).

The plugins most likely to be out of date and susceptible to an attack are Adobe (61%), Adobe Flash (46%), Microsoft Silverlight (27%) and Java (25%) and the most suspicious attachments include pdf (29%), doc (22%), html (13%) and xls (12%).