Learn Phishing attacks spike by 250%

Microsoft’s annual Security Intelligent Report (SIR) has discovered that phishing attacks have spiked by 250% throughout 2018.

The report analysed 6.5 trillion threat signals which pass through Microsoft’s cloud daily, and stated that “Microsoft threat analysts have seen evidence that attackers continue to use phishing as a preferred attack method.”

Phishing rates were seen to still be rising, and remains to be a problem for the foreseeable future.

Phishing is when fraudulent emails are sent, pretending to be from reputable companies, with the aim of receiving personal data in return. This personal information includes passwords and credit card numbers.

The report said: “Phishing remains one of the top attack vectors used to deliver malicious zero-day payloads to users.”

Microsoft also saw a trend in attackers utilizing hosted infrastructure and public clouds to avoid detection.

The types of phishing includes:

• Domain spoofing
• Domain impersonation
• User impersonation
• Text lures
• Credential phishing links
• Links to fake cloud storage locations

If you’d like to discuss keeping your important information secure, phone us on 0114 242 9860 to chat with a member of our security team.