What Do IT Professionals Think of Email Security in 2019?

• 660 IT professionals of all levels from around the world give their take on email security.
• People generally feel more confident today, but they are still highly afraid of BEC threats and Office 365 risks.
• In reality, the growing problems are BEC, phishing, costly data breaches, and ransomware.

Barracuda Networks surveyed 660 professionals working in the IT sector, and being engaged in various levels and businesses sizes. The purpose of the survey was to figure out what the “insiders” think of email security in 2019, what are the trends, what are their greatest concerns, and how close all this is to the actual reality. Barracuda was kind enough to share the report with TechNadu before its publication, so we had the chance to cherry-pick some of the data that we found very interesting.

The positive finding is that implementing security measures has an impact on the confidence of the IT pros, so 63% of the respondents said that they were more confident than they were last year. In the Asia-Pacific region, this percentage reached 70%.

When asked whether they had experienced a BEC (business email compromise) attack, an average of 82% responded affirmatively, with the percentage for the Americas reaching 85%. This is consistent with our latest report on the BEC multi-billion problem and how the USA is the most targeted region.

Having to deal with these attacks causes IT professionals stress, impacting their personal lives as they often have to work overtime and even during weekends to resolve BEC-induced problems.

In total, companies are increasing their investment in what has to do with email security, putting 85% more in spam filters, 68% more in email authentication, and 23% more in spear-phishing protection systems.

Out of the total number of reports about fraudulent email messages that the IT departments receive, only 42% percent is actual phishing and BEC attempts. This is mainly attributed to the employees being over-cautious and having a mixed or inadequate understanding of the clear signs of scams.

Spear phishing has hit 43% of the companies or organizations that the survey participants work for in the past twelve months, but interestingly, 79% of the respondents are worried about dangers that stem from inside their organizations. Again, BEC is on the spotlight, and most of the IT pros fear that there aren’t enough protection measures to help them deal with these threats.

Finally, it looks like almost no one trusts Office 365, as an overwhelming 92% has some kind of security concern with it. This is why 86% of the organizations have deployed additional Office 365 email protection systems.

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