TRENDING
to click harmful links or open malicious
files,” said Josh Douglas, Vice President of
Product Management, Threat Intelligence
at Mimecast.
“The ultimate goal of Mimecast’s
Threat Intelligence reports are to help
organizations better understand today’s
threat landscape, so they can prepare
for tomorrow’s threats and make better
informed decisions to improve their
cybersecurity and resilience.”
Key findings within the Mimecast
Threat Intelligence Report: Black
Hat USA Edition include:
• Threat actors go where the money
flows. The attacks from January–
June 2020 incorporated a vast array
of threats, including Azorult, Barys,
Cryxos, Emotet, Hawkeye, Lokibot,
Nanocore, Nemucod, Netwired, Remcos,
Strictor and ZLoader, and involved a
combination of mass generic Trojan
delivery with phishing campaigns with
the goal of monetary gain.
• Industries that remained opened during
the pandemic were the hardest hit. The
top sectors for attacks in the US were
manufacturing, retail/wholesale, and
finance and insurance. In addition, the
media and publishing sector suffered
high volumes of impersonation attacks
(48.4 million detections). This potentially
was a vehicle to spread disinformation
across the US.
• Organizations are at a higher risk
of being attacked by ransomware.
Researchers found that it is highly
likely that US businesses are at risk
of ransomware attacks, due to threat
actors’ efforts towards the high
volume, opportunistic attack of multiple
verticals. The circumstances of the
pandemic make organizations more
vulnerable to ransomware, so it will
likely remain a significant threat for the
second half of 2020.
• Impersonation attacks continue to
accelerate. The volume of sender
impersonation attacks increased by 24%
between January and June to nearly 46
million per month.
Methodology
The Mimecast Threat Intelligence Report:
Black Hat USA Edition provides analysis of
195 billion emails processed by Mimecast for
its customers during the period of January
through June 2020, 92 billion of which were
Josh Douglas, VP of Product Management,
Threat Intelligence at Mimecast
rejected (47%) for being malicious or spam.
Four primary threat categories were analyzed
in this report: spam, impersonation attacks,
opportunistic attacks and targeted attacks.
Mimecast Threat Intelligence is designed to
improve the efficacy of its Email Security 3.0
approach that delivers security and resilience
at the perimeter, inside the network and
organization, and outside the perimeter. •
26 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com