01 December 2021  —  Eric Swotinsky
Incident reports

Phishing attacks are booming, says Anti-Phishing Working Group

The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG), an international consortium (of which Acronis is a member) that aims to unify the global response against cybercrime, has released their Q3 2021 trend report.

The APWG states that members blocked a total of 260,642 phishing attacks in July, the highest number ever. Financial institutions were targeted in 35% of these phishing attacks, while 29% went after cloud applications and webmail solutions. Cryptocurrencies were the subject of a further 6%.

It's clear that attackers are broadening their scope. The number of brands being targeted has increased from 400 in early 2021 to 700 in September, and the overall volume of phishing attacks has doubled since the start of 2020.

Acronis Cyber Protect with Advanced Email Security (powered by Perception Point) eliminates the risk of interacting with phishing messages by preventing them from ever reaching users' inboxes, while integrated URL filtering capabilities block endpoints from reaching the malicious websites that such messages often use to spread malware.