There is a 47 percent increase in Phishing in Q1 2021 says Phishlabs

We covered the Phishing Trends report from Phishlabs in last podcast, and there’s another article that has some highlights.

From their data, there are 5 different targets for industries. They are:

1. Social Media
2. Financial
3. Webmail & Cloud Services
4. Ecommerce
5. Telecommunications

Social media is first, and I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised by this because it is heavily used by quite a number of people. The actors know this, and they’ll stop at nothing to get their attacks out there which include pointing people to things using platforms like Twitter and Facebook as their place to start.

According to this article, more than half of the accounts are fraudulent.

Of the phish targeting the social media industry in Q1, 21% targeted messaging apps. This allowed threat actors to connect with potential victims in real time, giving the impression that the communication was legitimate. Believing they are interacting with a benign individual, victims are more inclined to perform requested tasks such as clicking a link or divulging sensitive information.  

Also according to the article, Single Sign on may be part of the problem now, as you have one set of credentials for everything, but it is better productive wise to have something like it. There are links within the article that cover lots of these things.

There are other aspects of this article that I found of interest too.

The Financial sector has been hit hard, and the 5 types of financial institutions included:

1. National Banks
2. Payment Services
3. Credit Unions
4. Regional/Community Banks
5. Brokerage/Investments

There’s definitely more including cryptocurrency accounts also being an attractive target.

Again, the article is titled 47% Phishing Increase in Q1 and its well worth the read. Thanks so much for reading!