81% of Singapore IT Professionals concerned about email-based attacks, according to Phishing Trends Report

SINGAPORE – October 27th, 2017 – Today PhishMe®, the leading provider of human phishing defence solutions, released the results of its Singapore Phishing Response Trends Report, which looked at the phishing response strategies of IT security decision-makers across a variety of industries in the Singapore region.

The report highlights that despite technology investments, Singapore-based organisations are flooded with suspicious emails targeting employees. With 80% reported to be utilising anti-malware solutions and 76% email gateway filtering to prevent phishing threats, 63% of surveyed organisations still feel ill-prepared to process and adequately respond to such threats.

According to the Ponemon Institute, malicious or criminal attacks account for 40% of data breaches in Southeast Asian nations like Singapore, with the number of yearly attacks averaging 21,000[i]. Compared to phishing response trends emerging from the US and the UK, Singapore organisations claimed to be more unprepared to combat phishing attacks despite having dealt with more email-related incidents.

Key findings from the survey include:

  • 95% have dealt with security incidents originating with a deceptive email
  • Nearly 70% have faced an email threat more than once
  • Over a quarter of respondents see more than 500 suspicious emails weekly
  • Nearly all respondents have between one and four security layers already in place
  • Email-related threats are Singapore’s biggest security concern
  • Almost 60% of respondents highlighted technology alone isn’t the answer to phishing
  • 96% of surveyed IT professionals plan to upgrade their phishing response and prevention

“Phishing has become the number one attack vector and a rising concern for security professionals globally. The sophistication of recent scams in Singapore involving the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) as well as local airlines, is a clear testimony of how technology alone is unable to prevent modern breaches,” stated Rohyt Belani, CEO and Co-Founder at PhishMe. “With the number of phishing attacks growing exponentially, it is imperative for any organisation to embrace a human-focussed approach geared towards enabling employees to identify suspicious indicators.”

The full report is available for download here: https://phishme.com/phishing-response-trends-singapore

To learn more about PhishMe’s phishing incident solutions, please visit: www.phishme.com