INFOGRAPHIC
Mimecast releases latest Email
Security Risk Assessment (ESRA)
M
imecast Limited, a leading email
and data security company,
has announced the availability
of its latest quarterly Email Security Risk
Assessment (ESRA), an aggregated report
of tests that measure the efficacy of widely
used email security systems.
A Mimecast ESRA helps participating
organisations better understand the
number and type of email-borne threats
that are getting through their current
defences. As part of the cumulative
assessments, Mimecast has inspected more
than 142 million emails that have passed
through organisations’ incumbent email
security vendors.
“
TARGETED
MALWARE,
HEAVILY
SOCIALLY-
ENGINEERED
IMPERSONATION
ATTACKS AND
PHISHING
THREATS ARE
STILL REACHING
EMPLOYEE
INBOXES.
30
INTELLIGENTCIO
The latest results revealed that 203,000
malicious links within 10,072,682 emails
were deemed safe by other security systems
– a ratio of one unstopped malicious link for
every 50 emails inspected.
The report also found an 80% increase in
impersonation attacks in comparison to
last quarters’ report with 41,605 caught.
Additionally, 19,086,877 pieces of spam,
13,176 emails containing dangerous file
types and 15,656 malware attachments
were all missed by these incumbent providers
and delivered to users’ inboxes.
The report indicates the need for
organisations to enhance their cyber-
resilience strategies for email with a multi-
layered approach that includes a third-party
service provider.
This new ESRA report follows an SE Labs
Independent Email Security Services
Protection group test, which gave Mimecast
the top score and an ‘AAA’ rating.
“The SE Labs report highlights the need
for multiple layers of protection to
increase security efficacy and to address
the rise of more advanced email attacks,”
added Gardiner.
Mimecast is engineered to use multiple
layers and types of detection engines,
combined with high performance analytics
and a diverse set of threat intelligence
sources, overseen by the Mimecast SOC. This
helps protect email data and employees
from malware, spam, phishing and targeted
attacks – 100% from the cloud. n
“Targeted malware, heavily socially-engineered
impersonation attacks and phishing threats
are still reaching employee inboxes. This
leaves organisations at risk of a data breach
and financial loss,” said Matthew Gardiner,
Cybersecurity Strategist at Mimecast.
“Our latest quarterly analysis saw a
continued attacker focus on impersonation
attacks quarter-on-quarter. These are
difficult attacks to identify without
specialised security capabilities and this
testing shows that commonly used systems
aren’t doing a good job catching them.”
Matthew Gardiner, Cybersecurity Strategist
at Mimecast
www.intelligentcio.com