Can you remember your first email? Either sending one, or receiving it? I certainly remember explaining to people what email was, and I also remember someone telling me they could live without their email server for “about a month before it becomes a problem”.

Can you imagine that now? A month without email?

Emails are a necessary evil

According to Earthweb, approximately 333.2 billion emails are sent every day in 2022, which is around 3.5 million emails every second!

Email is, without doubt, the communication tool of choice for almost everyone, and it is critical for those of us running a business. Therefore, is it any wonder that against this backdrop of increasing email use, we see that fraudsters and cybercriminals use email as their primary delivery mechanism for phishing and malware?

According to APWG’s Phishing Activity Trends Report, there were 1.25 million phishing attacks in very the first quarter of 2022, making it the worst quarter for phishing observed to date. But like all statistics of this nature, we must keep in mind that this is the reported attacks – so many more go unnoticed or unreported. Therefore, although it is pure speculation, the number could be significantly higher.

Why is email so attractive?

This may sound like an easy question to answer, but email isn’t just a gateway into our organisations. It offers so much more. From a scammer’s perspective, it is very easy to get a  hold of email addresses, as most of us share them without any real concern or consideration for how they are used. We give out email addresses freely on websites when we sign up for newsletters or online services, and we share our email addresses when a shop assistant asks if we want a receipt emailed to us, or if we (Read more...)