Phishing attacks have long been a cyber security concern for IT professionals, and they often leverage popular brand names to convince users of the veracity of the log in forms that they are being asked to fill out. There have been many attempts to keep phishing attacks at bay, but in spite of the fact that this is the case these attacks have increased by as much as 61% in 2022 if the recent findings from SlashNext are anything to go by.
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that phishing attacks that use the names of trusted services such as AWS, Google or Microsoft have seen an even bigger increase of around 80%. This brings the total number of phishing attacks conducted in 2022 to a whopping 255 million. The number of malicious URLs has also seen a startling increase, and they are now touching 30 million for 2022 which is almost double the 18 million that was seen in 2021.
The biggest type of phishing continues to be credential harvesting, with 76% of all phishing attacks in 2022 being of that variety with all things having been considered and taken into account. A majority of these threats, 54% to be precise, are zero hour threats, which is up by 48% since 2021. That means that zero hour threats are a majority of phishing attacks for the first time, which might make them more dangerous than might have been the case otherwise.
Traditional security practices must be eschewed because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up providing malicious actors with easily circumventable protocols that they can work around. AI phishing controls need to be implemented so that phishing attack prevention can be automated. Modernizing security infrastructure is of the utmost importance given the rising tide of such attacks. Each attack is becoming more of a threat, so time is of the essence if industry leaders want to keep them at bay otherwise their employees might accidentally put sensitive corporate data at risk.
Read next: What Brand Gets Impersonated the Most During Phishing Attacks? The Answer Might Surprise You
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that phishing attacks that use the names of trusted services such as AWS, Google or Microsoft have seen an even bigger increase of around 80%. This brings the total number of phishing attacks conducted in 2022 to a whopping 255 million. The number of malicious URLs has also seen a startling increase, and they are now touching 30 million for 2022 which is almost double the 18 million that was seen in 2021.
The biggest type of phishing continues to be credential harvesting, with 76% of all phishing attacks in 2022 being of that variety with all things having been considered and taken into account. A majority of these threats, 54% to be precise, are zero hour threats, which is up by 48% since 2021. That means that zero hour threats are a majority of phishing attacks for the first time, which might make them more dangerous than might have been the case otherwise.
Traditional security practices must be eschewed because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up providing malicious actors with easily circumventable protocols that they can work around. AI phishing controls need to be implemented so that phishing attack prevention can be automated. Modernizing security infrastructure is of the utmost importance given the rising tide of such attacks. Each attack is becoming more of a threat, so time is of the essence if industry leaders want to keep them at bay otherwise their employees might accidentally put sensitive corporate data at risk.
Read next: What Brand Gets Impersonated the Most During Phishing Attacks? The Answer Might Surprise You
