Evolving Email Threats and How to Protect Against Them

Email security relies on timely, accurate information. Security solutions need information to detect and prevent threats, organizations need information to inform their security strategies, and users need information to identify, avoid, and report potential risks. As such, research efforts like the VIPRE Q3 Email Threat Trends Report are invaluable resources for anyone seeking to protect themselves from email threat actors. So, let’s cover some of the key takeaways from the report so you can incorporate them into your email security efforts.


Email Threat Actors Bypass Traditional Defenses


The key takeaway from this quarter’s report is that as email security threats evolve, email threat actors are changing their tactics to adapt. VIPRE’s proprietary sandboxing software and their Link Isolation tool caught 12.3 million malicious emails in Q3 2024 – up from 11 million last year – which suggests that cybercriminals are working harder than ever to obfuscate their tactics and avoid detection.


 


Similarly, VIPRE’s ThreatAnalyzer technologies, incorporated into their attachment and link sandboxing tools, caught an additional 68,000 nefarious links that had slipped past previous defenses. Again, it’s clear that traditional email security solutions can no longer prevent the most sophisticated attacks.


 


These links bypass traditional email defenses because threat actors use URL detection to great effect. This attack method utilizes a “clean” URL within the body of the email before redirecting the user to a malicious one upon clicking it.


 


These findings offer us a valuable lesson: organizations that only run legacy email security tools like spam filters and secure email gateways (SEGs) are vulnerable to exploitation, and sandboxing technologies are crucial for comprehensive protection.


AI-Powered Scams Continue to Present a Risk


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