A new study from Barracuda Networks demonstrates an alarming increase in email security breaches, with 78% of global organizations hacked in the last year alone. The findings of a global study of 2,000 senior IT and security executives point to the rapid infringement of email systems. It reveals a pressing requirement for sophisticated, automated, and human-aware security strategies.
Email is still the most frequently employed attack vector
Email is often the doorway for phishing, business email compromise or BEC, account takeovers, and ransomware. The percentage of breached organizations that encountered these infringements:
- 29% due to phishing or spear-phishing attacks
- 24% due to BEC incidents
- 22% due to account takeovers
- 29% due to brand impersonations
- 28% due to conversation hijacking or insider threats
These attacks are neither one-off events nor isolated. They are interconnected and part of a vast web of threats rooted in human fallibility, insufficient training, and organizational practices. From impersonal internal customers and spreading malware to developing full-blown ransomware, attackers do not need authorization once in possession of the right credentials.
Neal Bradbury explains:
“Email remains the number one attack vector, and securing it has never been more urgent – especially as cybercriminals leverage AI to improve and scale their attacks. As threats grow more advanced, so do the security tools organizations need to manage, creating complexity that overwhelms many security teams and hinders their ability to derive meaningful value.”
According to the explanation, the average amount spent for an organization to return to normalcy following a security breach now stands at $217.068.
Small establishments are regarded as less impacted than larger ones
In terms of recovery costs, 50-100 employee companies spend an average of $145,921 or $1,846 per employee, while firms with 1,000-2,000 employees now spend an average of $364,132 or $243 per employee.
Organizations that were not extorted took an average of two hours to a full day to detect the issue, and three to eight hours to correct the issue. This delay allowed ransomware operators to obtain leverage online, extract data, and disable systems.
Detection and proper response are also important. Why are organizations so flawed? The report’s authors point to the following causes for the difficulties.
What are the causes of these difficulties?
Advanced evasion techniques
- 47% of the companies questioned identified advanced phishing technology as the main struggle for the identification of threats. Many threats are AI-generated, contextually accurate, and very convincing emails that resemble day-to-day communications from the organization.
Human behavior
- According to 46% of organizations, their employees trust security tools to keep them safe regardless of how they act. At the same time, another 34% confessed that staff don’t treat suspicious emails seriously and avoid reporting them, thereby leaving threats in the network.
Lack of automation
- While 44% of organizations lack automated incident response tools, manual processes put enterprises at risk by delaying containment and increasing the attackers’ dwell time.
Bridging the skills gap
- One of the biggest concerns is the lack of skilled cybersecurity professionals. 40% of organizations see this as their major vulnerability, rising to 44% among email-breach and ransomware victims. Lack of expertise makes interpretation of alerts difficult, hinders reaction time, and prevents organizations from building powerful defenses.
Barracuda’s Email Security report concludes with recommendations for resilience that include:
- Continuous employee training to recognize and avoid phishing and social engineering clear reporting lines for any suspicious activity
- Least-privilege access levels to minimize credential theft and damage, MFA, and AI-driven security tools
- Email authentication via SDF, DKIM, and DMARC. Automated remedies to detect and remove threats post-delivery
- Compliance readiness for data protection and cyber insurance
Finally, attackers target trust as much as they target technology. With 78% of enterprises being breached and 71% facing ransomware, the need for email security is wishful thinking. Resilience requires speed, competence, and automation. Make your weakest link your most robust protection.