Phishing is on the rise and has arguably been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 lockdown measures have left us more reliant on the internet than ever before. As with most major world events, the pandemic has generated an environment in which bad actors can take advantage of a range of COVID-19-related hooks to commit cybercrime and fraud—preying on people’s vulnerabilities to make a quick buck.
Statistics from the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) show that phishing reached an all-time high in July 2021. There were over a quarter of a million attacks in a single month, and the number of attacks in 2021 were double that of early 2020. Between Q1 and Q3 in 2021, the number of brands experiencing a phishing attack increased by 75%.
Phishing is often a gateway action that is used to infiltrate systems to launch bigger, more serious attacks, including malware and ransomware attacks, domain name system (DNS) hijacking, and so forth.
Read the full article by CSC’s Elliott Champion and Fernando Cevallos to find out the risks that phishing presents to organizations of all sizes, plus learn about CSC’s best practice recommendations to combat online fraud.
Accreditation: This is an extract from the 2022 edition of WTR’s Anti-counterfeiting and Online Brand Enforcement: Global Guide 2022. The whole publication is available here.