Phishing is now big time. Can security keep up?

Phishing is on the rise, and it’s no longer limited to amateurish, badly worded emails from obviously fake accounts.

Phishing is now a multibillion-dollar criminal enterprise that targets consumers and businesses in increasingly sophisticated ways. Through a combination of brand impersonation and domain exploitation, scammers are creating phishing messages that are harder than ever to detect.

Phishing attacks designed to steal funds and tax data rose 60 percent in 2018, in part because criminal gangs are leveraging legitimate business tools like marketing contact lists to target specific victims to scam. Fraudsters are also getting better at impersonating brands that consumers trust, such as Microsoft, Amazon and Netflix, in order to dupe email recipients into handing over login credentials that can be used to launch account takeover attacks. 

Chart showing the percentage of phissing attacks

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