Impersonation Attacks are on the rise
Impersonation attacks are among the latest advanced targeted attacks that use email to dupe employees into revealing information or making financial transactions. During impersonation attacks, attackers pose as a CEO, CFO or other high level executive and request an employee to perform a specific action via email. Impersonation attacks like wire transfer phishing often trick users into making wire transfers or revealing sensitive employee data such as payroll information that may be used in identity theft.
Impersonation attacks succeed by utilizing engineering tactics against users, including display names and domain names that appear to be genuine but are actually well-crafted fakes. Attackers often use personal information found on social media accounts to convince the user that the email has been sent by a trusted individual.
1In recent years, the number of impersonation attacks has risen sharply, with the FBI estimating a 270% increase in the first eight months of 2015, and the cost of these attacks to the business world has exceeded $2 billion since January 2015.
To thwart impersonation attacks, a growing number of organizations worldwide are turning to the highly effective phishing protection software provided by Mimecast's email security services.
Stop impersonation attacks with Mimecast
Mimecast provides comprehensive defenses against advanced targeted attacks, providing highly effective impersonation, phishing and spear phishing protection. Mimecast Targeted Threat Protection scans email in real-time to identify and block suspicious websites and attachments, and to prevent employees from inadvertently revealing credentials or succumbing to financial fraud. Mimecast's email security services can also stop ransomware, provide 100% anti-malware protection, combat spam and defend against data leaks and other email threats.
Email protection software for comprehensive security
Mimecast's email protection software provides comprehensive defenses against email threats. These include:
- Malware and spam protection. Mimecast's Secure Email Gateway provides 100% anti-malware protection and 99% anti-spam protection, with 0.0001% false positives.
- Advanced threat protection. Mimecast Targeted Threat Protection defends against threats like phishing, spear-phishing and business email compromise by blocking malicious URLs and weaponized attachments, and scanning all email for signs of fraud or social engineering.
- Data leak prevention (DLP). Mimecast Content Control and Data Leak Prevention improves DLP network security by scanning all email for possible leaks based on administrator-defined policies.
- Secure messaging. Mimecast Secure Messaging enables users to send secure messages quickly and easily without needing to manage encryption keys or certificates, and enables administrators to set policies to automatically encrypt certain messages and attachments based on their content.
- Secure large file transfer. Mimecast Large File Send provides an easy-to-use solution for emailing large files (up to 2 GB), allowing employees to avoid third-party file sharing services that can't provide the security and content control required to protect email data.
Learn more about Mimecast's email protection software, and about Mimecast solutions for Office 365 security compliance and ways to retrieve deleted emails.