Resources

Blog

Common Social Media Scams and How to Avoid Them

While there are an estimated 30,000 daily cyber attacks on business websites, there are roughly ten times as many attacks against social media accounts every single day, equating to roughly 1.4 billion accounts every month. Social media attacks and scams have become pervasive problems, with threat actors finding innovative new ways to deceive users and steal their information. While social media...
Blog

The Royal & BlackCat Ransomware: What you Need to Know

The US healthcare sector continues to be aggressively targeted by ransomware operators. Royal and BlackCat are two of the more recent – and highly sophisticated – ransomware threats. These two new flavors of ransomware pose serious potential impacts on the healthcare sector, but there are appropriate mitigation and defense strategies that organizations can take to protect against them. What is...
Blog

Understanding How Polymorphic and Metamorphic Malware Evades Detection to Infect Systems

Polymorphic and metamorphic malware constantly changes itself in order to avoid detection and persistently remain on the system. This adaptive behavior is the main distinctive attribute of these types of malware, which is also why they are harder to detect; it is also why they pose a great threat to systems. On the surface, the functionality of this sort of changing and mutating malware appears...
Blog

99% of User-Related Threats Are Email Impersonation Attempts

Threats in corporate inboxes hit new highs with a quarter of all reported emails classified as malicious or untrustworthy. 99% of these threats were email impersonation threats, such as BEC and credential theft lures, that lack attachments or URLs delivering malware payloads. Cybercriminals continue to bypass traditional email security tools and reach end users by impersonating individuals...
Video

Introduction to Fortra's Cloud Email Protection Platform

Even with Secure Email Gateways in place, deceptive attacks like BEC, targeted social engineering ploys, and spear phishing attempts can still get into user inboxes. In this video, Fortra’s Advanced Email Security experts discuss how Fortra’s Cloud Email Protection, a new integrated cloud email security platform, delivers multi-faceted defense against advanced email threats, including:: How AI...
Video

QR Codes That Aren’t Cool – How to Defend Your Inbox from Quishing Attacks

Most organizations have security controls in place to inspect URLs in emails to prevent the risk of credential phishing and business email compromise (BEC) attacks. However, threat adversaries have pivoted their tactics in order to bypass security stacks. The QR code is now the carrier of choice for delivering these types of payloads via email. Is your organisation ready to tackle this new...
On-Demand Webinar

Email Impersonation and Machine Learning

Over 98% of threats reaching user inboxes impersonate individuals or brands to slip past email filters. In this video, Fortra’s Advanced Email Security experts discuss how machine learning models can help detect and remove email impersonation threats at scale. You’ll learn: The machine learning applications for comprehensive email threat detection How mapping email senders informs models to ferret...
On-Demand Webinar

QR Codes That Aren't Cool Webinar

Threat adversaries have pivoted their credential phishing and BEC tactics in order to bypass security stacks. In this video, Fortra’s Advanced Email Security expert, Dr. Steve Jeffery, discusses how the QR code has become the carrier of choice for delivering payloads via email and what your organization needs to put in place to stop them. You’ll learn: How human and machine mitigations help ward...
On-Demand Webinar

DMARC Revisited: Email Authentication in 2024

Implementing DMARC is one of the simplest ways to prevent email spoofing and ensure consistent email deliverability. Agari DMARC Protection will lead you through a safe and efficient DMARC implementation with features that allow you to: Catalogue and authenticate all legitimate senders–both 3rd-party and internal Navigate past common authentication pitfalls Comply with today’s major email provider...
Blog

DMARC Quarantine vs. DMARC Reject: Which Should You Implement?

You did it! You can now take a quiz and accurately answer "What Is DMARC?"! Next you've generated your DMARC record, implemented your policy, and authenticated your email domains. DMARC is no easy feat in itself and now, after DNS requests, third-party conference calls and writing internal policies, you are ready...to enforce a stricter DMARC policy ! If your DMARC policy has been set to p=none...
Blog

Dark Web Focus on Credit Unions Increases in Q1

In Q1, Credit Unions nearly surpassed Banking Institutions as the top targeted industry on the dark web . Just under 36% of stolen card data on dark web platforms was linked to Credit Unions, marking the fourth consecutive quarter the industry has seen an increase in malicious activity. Every quarter, Fortra’s PhishLabs analyzes hundreds of thousands of attacks targeting enterprises and our...
Blog

Social Media Attacks Targeting Banks and Retail Climb in Q1

Social media attacks targeting businesses have jumped 12.2% in Q1 from the previous quarter, according to Fortra’s PhishLabs. Attacks on social channels are also trending higher than Q1 2022, with the average business experiencing more than 81 attacks per month. External platforms, such as social media , are widely used by cybercriminals to engage in fraud and distribute misinformation...
Blog

Untrustworthy Email in Inboxes Reaches All-Time High

In Q1, the volume of emails classified as malicious or do not engage reached nearly a quarter of all reported emails. This is the highest combined volume of these categories since Fortra’s PhishLabs has documented this data point. Of those classified as malicious, threats considered email impersonation or, those lacking known signatures, made up a significant 98.7%. Every quarter, PhishLabs...
Blog

Free Domain Abuse Plummets in Q1 as Staging Methods Shift

Free domain registrations used to stage phishing sites have experienced a significant drop in activity, contributing to just under 2% of phishing abuse in Q1. Free domain registrations and other no-cost means of staging phishing infrastructures are historically a favorite of threat actors. While no-cost methods as a whole did make up the majority of abuse in Q1, the decline in free domains can be...
Article

Effective Strategies for Protecting Against BEC

While BEC is incredibly simple and effective, it is not unstoppable. Organizations need to go beyond traditional email security measures to detect, block, and prevent email impersonations. Learn what steps need to be taken in order to combat BEC and protect your organization from this popular attack.
Blog

Top Tactics of BEC Attacks in 2023

Email impersonation is the fastest growing and most successful means of bypassing email security controls. In Q4 2022, the response-based and credential theft attacks that make up email impersonation reached their highest percentage of share of all email threat volume, contributing to more than 97% of attacks reported by end users. In this series, we look at the top email impersonation threats...
Blog

Emotet Returns from Hiatus, Trails QBot in Q1 Volume

QBot and Emotet payloads contributed to more than 93% of reported payload volume in Q1, according to Fortra’s PhishLabs. While QBot represented the majority of attacks, this is the first known activity by Emotet actors since 2022 and the largest spike in Emotet reports since Q2 of last year. Email payloads remain the primary delivery method of ransomware targeting organizations. PhishLabs’...
On-Demand Webinar

What's Making It Past Secure Email Gateways?

How frequently are advanced threats actually bypassing your email security controls? One of the greatest challenges to protecting end users from high impact email attacks is detecting identity deception. Fortra has conducted an analysis of real end user phishing reports to determine which advanced threat types evade common secure email gateways and the frequency which they occur to better...
Blog

What to Know About Business Email Compromise (BEC) Scams

Business email compromise (BEC) is a dangerous type of email spoofing that targets businesses, aiming to damage them in some way. Overall, BEC “is one of the most financially damaging online crimes,” according to a joint Cybersecurity Advisory by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Food and Drug Administration Office of Criminal Investigations (FDA OCI), and the US Department of...