Dive Brief:
- Shopping on the day after Black Friday, or "Gray Saturday," will have a reduced risk of financial phishing schemes by about 33%, according to Kaspersky Labs. There has been a pattern of decline in both 2015 and 2016 on Gray Saturday.
- Financial phishing attacks account for about half of all phishing schemes, an increase from about 34% in 2015.
- Despite Gray Saturday falling into the most popular holiday shopping period of the year, malicious actors are less likely to attack on weekends, claims Kaspersky. The use of VPNs and trusted HTTP websites are two of the safest measures in preventing a phishing attack.
Dive Insight:
Phishing schemes are easy for hackers preying on vulnerable consumers, but the enterprise is no different. For companies with a workforce untrained in cybersecurity, fraudulent emails are widely successful for perpetrating an attack.
Employees use work computers for personal business regularly, thus threatening the security integrity of their workplace. About 47% of employees send personal emails and 45% of employees "conduct personal activity on the internet" while at work.
Phishing attacks account for 26% of enterprise fraud, the second most common threat behind worms or viruses. Vulnerable employees are even susceptible to fake emails from their company's executives; fake emails from CEOs cost companies about $5.3 billion in the last three years.
The threat of a cyberattack far outweighs the cost of its prevention. IT departments must be aggressive in company-wide security training as about 60% of IT security teams remain understaffed.
