3 in 4 Aussie businesses hit by email attacks in past year

Nearly three in four (74%) Australian organisations have fallen victim to at least one successful email attack in the last 12 months, according to research commissioned by Barracuda Networks.

The company’s 2023 Email Security Trends report found that companies affected faced average potential costs of over $1.4 million for their most expensive attack, with 25% of respondents reporting that the cost of successful attacks has soared over the last year.

For the report, research firm Vanson Bourne questioned 150 Australian IT professionals from frontline to the most senior roles in companies with at least 100 employees.

The research found that the top impacts of successful email attacks included downtime and business disruption (reported by 42% of respondents), followed by loss of employee productivity (41%), and brand and company reputation damage (37%).

Australian organisations meanwhile admitted to being underprepared to deal with potential consequences including data loss (34%), viruses/ malware (33%) and spam (29%).

The effects of attacks differed across industries. Organisations in the financial sector were particularly affected by the loss of valuable data and money to attackers, while for the manufacturing sector the top impact was the disruption of business operations.

Barracuda SVP for Engineering and Email Protection Product Management Don MacLennan said email is an attractive target for cybercriminals because it is typically a trusted and ubiquitous communications channel.

“We expect email-based attacks to become increasingly sophisticated, leveraging AI and advanced social engineering in their attempts to get the data or access they want and evade security measures,” he said.

“Email-based attacks can be the initial access point for a wide range of cyberthreats, including ransomware, information stealers, spyware, crypto mining, other malware, and more. It is not surprising that IT teams around the world don’t feel fully prepared to defend against many email-based threats.”

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