Email Fraud – Phishing, Malware & Ransomware Increasing Via Email

A few months ago, the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3; Complaints Office for Internet Crime ), run by the FBI, published its annual Internet Crime Report (PDF). This report explains the impact of attacks on organizations worldwide and relates to the past year, 2020. The figures mentioned are likely to be alarming: 791,790 complaints were received last year, with more than 4 billion US dollars in total annual losses. The report also shows which risks companies should specifically address:

BEC / EAC & Phishing

In addition to business email compromise, email account compromise (EAC) caused the highest losses, which the IC3 puts at over 1.8 billion US dollars. BEC / EAC and phishing are more significant threats than ransomware. According to the report: Financial losses were 64 times higher than ransomware attacks. These attacks account for a whopping 44% of the total loss! Completely different from the complaints: Overall, they only accounted for 2.4% of all complaints.

The supply chain ecosystem appears attractive for cybercriminals to attack companies indirectly. In particular, imitating and compromising providers turns out to be risky for companies since many organizations unfortunately hardly have an overview of the risks of their providers. There is an increasing number of different BEC / EAC variants:

• Redirecting salary payments,

• Gift card fraud after providers have been compromised,

• Fraud related to acquisitions or mergers,

• Redirecting deliveries or also

• Fabrication with invoices from suppliers/partners.

There were significantly more complaints when it came to phishing: Almost a third of the complaints received by IC3 related to phishing. The fact that the number of complaints almost doubled from 126,640 reports in 2019 to 241,342 complaints in 2020 can prove that the targets of the attack are less the infrastructure weaknesses than the people in the company. With targeted employee awareness-raising, criminal actors can be prevented from successfully exploiting human weaknesses. In our article on phishing protection, we go into different types of phishing and give you tips on how to protect yourself against phishing.

Email Fraud – Criminals Take Advantage of The Corona Crisis

The IC3 report shows that criminals were able to take advantage of the pandemic for their attacks. The year 2020 with the corona crisis was a hit for cybercriminals – that’s why we issued warnings in March and again in December 2020. Pandemic topics were used for general phishing or targeted social engineering attacks: vaccines, aids for companies, or new COVID19 variants spurred the creativity of cybercriminals. Please expect that pandemic topics will continue to be used for attacks in the future.

Malware Like Ransomware Is Gaining Traction.

Email fraud – more specifically, email phishing campaigns – is one of the most common ways of getting infected with ransomware; this is also evident from the IC3 report. There were 2,474 incidents, according to the information in 2020. The losses are put at more than 29 million US dollars. Explosive: The report emphasizes that ransomware losses were kept “artificially low” in the account. The number given does not include information about lost business, wages, lost time, failed devices, or lost files. Reports from FBI field offices were also not taken into account. Accordingly, it can be assumed that the actual numbers related to ransomware are significantly higher.

Not only ransomware but also other malware is relevant to the field of email fraud. In our article “Identity theft on the Internet: What is malware?” We look at different types of malware and give you tips on malware detection.

Study: Pattern Recognition in Email Fraud

In collaboration with researchers from Stanford University, Internet giant Google has looked at patterns that make users the preferred victims of email fraud. Based on data from more than a billion malware and phishing emails, the investigation aimed to find out whether attack victims become targets for any reason. As a result, it could be possible to optimize protection strategies. Indeed, the researchers succeeded in identifying various factors that can increase the likelihood of attack:

The origin of potential targets of attack could already be the first characteristic. After all, 42% of all email attacks target victims in the US, followed by 10% in the UK and 5% in Japan. The researchers found that attackers do not necessarily localize their emails. Instead, the same email template with an everyday linguistic basis is used so that English-speaking users are preferred victims for this reason alone. With these identical templates, criminals try to contact small groups of between 100 and 1,000 recipients for two or three days.

Users whose email addresses were already traded in one of the numerous data leaks in recent years were written to five times the probability of average users. 

For the researchers, the age of potential victims also increased the risk: Email fraud occurs almost twice as often in people between the ages of 55 and 64 as in the 18 to 24 age group. These figures could also go hand in hand with mobile devices: If people only used emails on their mobile devices, the risk of attack compared to people who access emails on different devices was 20% lower.

Overall, the study shows that one could hardly speak of an indiscriminate approach, but there is usually no specific targeting. Therefore, choosing specific targets as attack victims is more likely with BEC / EAC attacks than with phishing and malware attacks.

Also Read: Email marketing In B2B – How Well Are Your Mailings Working?

Protect Yourself From Email Fraud

Knowledge is power – this philosophy also applies to your email security! Therefore, the first way to protect yourself against email fraud is to learn as much as you can about various attack vectors. This is why the study carried out by Google and Stanford University is valuable: it helps to assess how at-risk you as a user are. It is also helpful to know where you stand – and you can quickly test that: With our phishing quiz and our S / MIME test, you can measure yourself against colleagues and test your knowledge. You can also use the following tips to protect yourself efficiently against email fraud:

• Up-to-date: Stay up to date by learning about email scams. It’s straightforward with our support: We report on current developments in our blog and our newsletter.
• Stay Skeptical: Keep your healthy skepticism about your emails. That means: If you receive an email with links and attachments, don’t just click on it, but check the message. Email fraudsters are becoming more and more professional so that fraudulent emails are not always easy to detect. In addition to the origin, check the sender of the message; the source text of your emails provides further information. However, it would help if you also considered the possibilities of email spoofing, i.e., concealing the sender’s true identity and simulating a different identity. If in doubt, call the alleged sender to find out whether the message came from there. Also, keep in mind
• No direct replies: If you find an email suspicious, ideally, do not reply directly. Instead, start a new communication using one of the communication channels used by your company.
• Strong logins: Rely on solid passwords for your email account – and ideally also on two-factor authentication (2FA). We have put together helpful tips for you in the article “Secure passwords: Strong passwords increase security” for creating strong passwords.
• AV Suite: Good antivirus programs also warn you about email scams. It is advisable to read reviews of AV suites regularly because the numerous antivirus programs differ massively in their functions and malware detection.
• Updates: Your AV suite, your email client, your operating system, and all other programs you use should receive regular updates. Ideally, you should apply security patches immediately to prevent published vulnerabilities from attracting cybercriminals.
• Encryption: encrypt your emails! In this way, you not only create confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity but also create competitive advantages for yourself: Industrial espionage is a genuine threat that you can prevent with email encryption and eavesdropping or manipulation by cybercriminals.
• Awareness: We cannot emphasize it enough: The most significant security gap in companies is people. Employees who do not know what types of email fraud naturally cannot protect themselves against it. Therefore: Train your employees because a sensitized team is a safe team.

The post Email Fraud Is The Most Significant Business Loss appeared first on TechReviewsCorner.

Email marketing in B2B: at least since the GDPR, email marketing in B2B has become a challenge. Regardless of whether it is newsletters or promotional emails – marketers need a declaration of consent (double opt-in) to contact users via email. In addition, you often have to deal with difficult topics in B2B marketing. In the article, you will find out what email marketing is, how you can use it in B2B and we use a benchmark to show how successful B2B email marketing is in comparison. We also have 11 tips for your email marketing.

The average open rate of B2B marketing emails is 26. This is the result of the Email Marketing Benchmark 2020 by Episerver. Are you over or under? On average, only one in four opens your email at all. In the first part of the article, we will analyze the study for you and then explain how you can make your email marketing more successful in 11 steps.

What Is Email Marketing? Definition:

Email marketing describes the process of sending emails to different groups of customers or prospects. For example, new products or news can be the focus. Often, however, e-mail marketing also serves to increase customer loyalty through newsletters or discount campaigns that are sent by e-mail.

Due to the progress of digitization, the sending of emails is becoming more and more automated. A marketing automation system also supports this.

E-Mail Marketing Study – What The Results Mean

According to the benchmark, only every 4th of the addressed target group opens your email at all. The opening rate unique is the percentage ratio between the number of tracked openings of a mailing and the messages delivered.

Whereas the absolute opening rate – i.e. all, including repeated openings – looks much better. In B2B, this is 62%. This means that some of the recipients even open your e-mails several times, for example, because they want to reread the text of the message or want to delve into the topics of the newsletter.

These multiple openers are particularly interesting for you as a company. Because they are keenly interested in your products and most likely didn’t just accidentally open the email and then delete it directly.

Also Read: Gadget Trends – Applications For Video Surveillance Cameras In B2B [2021]

11 Tips For Better Email Marketing In B2B

Get Personal

The first and most important tip is to personalize your emails. If you write to a mailing list with 5000 contacts and everyone receives the same e-mail without addressing them personally, then this is – especially in B2B marketing – a likely unsuccessful undertaking.

Of course, this point differs depending on the purpose of the email, but the more I feel spoken to and understood, the more likely I have a positive association with the company.

You have already defined different buyer personas for your content marketing (if not, you will find a template behind the link with which you can easily do this). Use these different interest groups to reach you in a targeted and accurate manner in your e-mails. It starts with the subject.

For example, an engineer might want to be addressed differently and read different information in your e-mail than a managing director.

Your Sender Should Be Real

The same applies to the sender. A personal (real) sender is much more popular than a general email address, such as sales @ XY or marketing @ XY.

Testing, testing, testing

I know, damn complex, but necessary. If you are at the beginning of your e-mail marketing measures or readjust them, you should test what goes down well with your target group. In this way, you can validly substantiate and justify your email marketing strategy and at the same time find new ideas and starting points on how you can inspire the recipients even more.

• There are a few points to consider:
• If you want to test the subject or the sender, then you have to pay attention to the opening rate.
• If you want to check your call-to-action, you should examine the links for the respective URL
• Do little tests. If you test two completely different emails and the performance doesn’t differ, you don’t know what the problem was.

What was it?

• The subject
• The first sentence
• The sender
• The CTA
• The layout

But not all at once, but one after the other.

Short And To The Point, Please

The spice lies in the brevity – yes, actually, even more, empty phrases. But when it comes to email marketing, it gets to the point. Both the subject line should be crisp, exciting, and meaningful – as the study proves – as well as the mail itself.

The shorter and more concise the email looks when it is opened, the more likely it will be read. However, if you overload the recipient with floods of text, he is more likely to close the mail again. Get to the point quickly and keep this in mind in your writing – it is not important what you want to say, but what the recipient wants to read.

The Speech Has To Be Right

Of course, you should be friendly, charming and maybe a little funny. If you want to make the recipient aware of a problem that your product can solve, then suggest understanding – this leads to positive associations.

Package the problem and solution, for example, in a story. Use the expertise from content marketing and storytelling for this. Nevertheless, be clear in your message and also in the aim of the mailing.

A Call To Action Is Essential

The question: “What should the recipient of my mailing do?” is immensely important. Because it provides information about which call-to-action (CTA) you need to incorporate. This can be, for example, a consultation or a link to a further landing page/microsite.

In the best-case scenario, you only have one CTA per email.

Also Read: The Best Providers To Set Up An Online Business

It All Depends On Appearance

Opinions are divided on the format – i.e. HTML or text mail. I can only speak from my experience here and text mails worked a lot better for us. Because a text mailing doesn’t feel like a mass mailing and at first glance even looks like personal mail. However, our newsletter is still an HTML mailing with images to better convey the content. You should test what works better for you and your recipients.

Mobile-first

Today, many recipients read their emails on their smartphones, even in B2B. So be sure to test whether your email also looks good on the go.

Who does not want it, already has it

For marketing, bulk, and sales emails, you must give recipients the option to unsubscribe. Many companies hide the unsubscribe button. I advise against that. Firstly, there have been severe penalties since the GDPR and, secondly, your emails are more often declared as spam. If this happens too often, you may be blocked by the mail providers. Email marketing without the user’s consent is taboo anyway – by the way, it was before the GDPR.

Automate

Marketing Automation Systems (MAS) are the miracles of modern marketing. Sooner or later, such software will be worthwhile for most companies. If you can automate the mailing effort, email marketing will be faster, more personalized, and easier. You can carry out tests more easily and the evaluation is also ensured by such tools.

Analyze

If you have sent a mailing, you should analyze and evaluate the entire campaign afterward. This is the only way you can make the right improvement measures for upcoming email marketing campaigns.

Conclusion: Email Marketing In B2B

If you are wondering why your e-mails are not performing the way you would like them to, expect very different answers. Because the performance of your email marketing depends on a variety of indicators, for example:

• Technical requirements: spam filter, email clients, etc.
• Recipient base: Have correct, up-to-date addresses
• Presentation: subject line, address, and layout
• Trust: sender, reputation, seriousness
• User focus: Relevant topic, personalization

All of these points help to carry technical trends from the market into the company. Because another task in technical marketing is market observation. Competitive analysis and future trends play an important role.

The post Email marketing In B2B – How Well Are Your Mailings Working? appeared first on TechReviewsCorner.