Fighting phishing and securing data with email authentication

Abstract

Business email compromise scams (also known as ‘CEO fraud’) have cost companies $3.1bn in the past two years alone, according to the FBI. Indeed, spear-phishing is one of the biggest challenges facing enterprises today, with 84% of businesses having already suffered from an attack. Why is email fraud so effective? Too often, organisations use people, their weakest link, as their first line of defence. This presents a huge opportunity for cyber-criminals. The cost of phishing – in revenue, in data lost, in remediation and regulatory costs – is far too great to leave the email channel undefended. Estelle Derouet of Return Path explores the primary means of executing one of the most dangerous spear-phishing attacks today. And she offers some best practices for combating email fraud at the organisational level.