Phishing

Email-based cyber threats are growing more sophisticated, with attackers increasingly using tactics like QR code phishing, known malware variants, and AI-powered impersonation to bypass traditional defenses and target users, data, and systems.

This report looks into the notable email threats of 2023, including the 45,261,542 high-risk email threats we detected and blocked using the Trend Micro™ Cloud App Security solution, also referred to as Trend Vision One™ — Email and Collaboration Protection solution, which is part of the Trend Vision One Email and Collaboration Security suite.

This report provides an overview of the notable email threats of the past year to help organizations better understand the ever-changing threat landscape. We detail the top email threats of 2022, including the 39.9 million high-risk email threats that we detected using the Trend Micro Cloud App Security platform, a security solution that supplements email providers’ built-in security.

In this report, we highlight the notable email threats of 2021, including over 33.6 million high-risk email threats (representing a 101% increase from 2020’s numbers) that we’ve detected using the Trend Micro Cloud App Security platform.

We discuss the notable email threats of 2020 that we found using the Trend Micro Cloud App Security solution, including over 16.7 million high-risk email threats, in addition to those detected by cloud email services’ built-in security.

We found some fake Facebook accounts stolen from influential accounts to sell, change the details, and/or reused for phishing.

Trend Micro Cloud App Security detected and blocked 12.7 million high-risk threats that passed through the built-in security of cloud-based email services. We provide an in-depth report on the notable trends and stories from 2019 to help organizations prepare.

A Texas school district is investigating an email phishing attack after a series of transactions resulted in the loss of an estimated US$2.3 million.