14 DAY TRIAL // Phishing is the act of masquerading as a legitimate entity in order to obtain sensitive information from another party. The technique is one of the first spotted security attacks after viruses, with the first cases being detected during the mid-90s.
Currently costing enterprises around $5 billion / €4.47 billion a year, the impact of phishing and the subsequent identity and data theft is devastating to any business affected by this issue.
With over 50% of company employees admitting to clicking on phishing links during a period of 18 months, phishing and spear phishing are often the main source and cause of data breaches.
Hackers employing this technique don't always target big companies, as smaller actors specialized in online fraud also use mass spam campaigns to phish out Visa card data (31.02% of attacks), PayPal credentials (30.03%, and American Express card details (24.6%).
What's also very interesting is that once a phishing campaign is started, half of the victims fall prey to it in the first hour after the emails are sent out. By the time someone realizes something is wrong, and security products are able to detect the campaign, most of the damage has already been done.
You can find more details about the phenomenon of phishing in the infographic below, created by OPSWAT, a US company that specializes in software management and online threat prevention.
