Secure Email Handling

Let us look now at statistics of phishing incidents in the past few years. As you can see from the chart from the ThreatLabz 2023 Phishing Report, there is a continuous rise in phishing attacks. The report mentions that not only the number of attacks has been increased but also the level of sophistication. Many cybersecurity experts believe that this trend will continue. FACC is a parts manufacturer mainly for the aviation industry that is located in Austria. In 2016, FACC has become a victim of a phishing email attack, when the cybercriminal impersonated the CEO, and sent emails to a junior accountant asking for an urgent money transfer for a new project. The Upsher-Smith Laboratories in 2014 and Leoni AG in 2016 attacks are all similar and can be categorized as VIP impersonation phishing email attacks. Another type of email phishing attack is called system impersonation. This is the kind of attack that the US-based company: Ubiquiti Networks has fallen victim to. The attackers targeted Ubiquiti employees through a sophisticated phishing campaign impersonating the software tools they use, tricking them into revealing their login credentials. With this information, the attackers were able to access Ubiquiti's systems and gain administrative privileges. Tecnimont India which is an arm of the Italian energy and engineering company has fallen victim to a sophisticated scam where a group of cybercriminals has presented themselves as the management of the company in Italy and scheduled a meeting with the head of the Indian branch to transfer money to China for a confidential acquisition of a Chinese company. The scammers have also impersonated the fake Chinese company to be acquired.