• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, December 21, 2023

Phishing is rising dramatically across the globe, judging by a new report from EasyDMARC. 

Of 4.34 billion emails tracked across 10 countries, 769 million, or 17.73%, were flagged as imitating a legitimate domain in the first half of 2023. The percentage is expected to rise to 20% by the start of 2024.  

That’s up from the 250 million out of 2.5 billion emails seen in the first half of 2022 — 10.21%. The research was conducted across 15,440 domains. 

Moreover, the research flagged 16,298 emails per domain as potentially harmful, a 24% increase YoY. 

From January 2022 to November 2023, the phishing emails intercepted by the firm’s DMARC software grew by 7.5%. 

The study cites statistics showing that phishing campaigns pulled an average click rate of 17.8% in 2021.

The average cost of a cyber attack is $4.45 million globally, and $9.48 million in the U.S. 

“Impersonating email addresses and domains continues to be an alarmingly effective tactic used by cybercriminals to bypass cyber defenses,” says Gerasim Hovhannisyan, co-founder and CEO of EasyDMARC. 

Hovhannisyan adds: “The fact that EasyDMARC customers have seen a 70% proportional increase in potentially malicious emails highlights the urgent need for businesses to act.”

But there is some good news as well. Despite these challenges,“examples such as Gmail and Yahoo’s recent expansion of email authentication protections highlight that awareness is spreading,” Hovhannisyan says. “Implementing protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to verify sender identities is one key way businesses can protect themselves.”