E-mail Phishing Attacks Take Just Minutes to Hook Recipients

As I scroll through my emails everyday, I see tons of emails that are spam such as; fake bank companies trying to trick me to log on to their website to acquire my personal information. Phishing is a lot more common than we think and everyone gets spam in their emails, so everyone is at risk of getting involved with phishing sometime in their life. Phishing is defined as the "illegal attempt to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details that is used for malicious reasons such as identity theft." The phishing e-mails that I get from banks or credit card companies are almost so deceiving that they look like a legitimate e-mail.   

According to the article I read from Wired, e-mail phishing takes only seconds for someone to receive your information, which gives you little to no time to react and protect your personal information. According the new Verizon Breach Investigations report, if your someone in IT security, you've got one minute and twenty seconds to save your company from being hacked. This is the median time it takes for an employee to open a phishing email that lands on a company’s network and in their inbox, which sets a motion to prevent data from leaking. Verizon noted that 23% of recipients open phishing e-mails and what is more dangerous is the 11% who go as far as to click the attachments that are contained in the e-mail. This is scary information to know because I feel like these statistics are much higher than they should be, especially with so much knowledge on the web about protecting your personal information and identity from phishing. In 37% of the breaches examined, defenders were able to contain the attack within hours. I’m also surprised by this percentage because I feel like as soon as I see anything suspicious on any of my credit card statements, e-mails, or anything else that contains my personal information, I do an investigation immediately or change my password. I also never open any suspicious or spam e-mails.

The article goes on to say that although many organizations are quick to respond to an attack on their network, it still takes a long time to uncover the breach, which is the main issue here. Typically, it can take several months to years to uncover a breach. I think that with technology and the knowledge we can obtain in the world today, we should be more cautious when opening certain e-mails. I also think it is a little ridiculous that it takes some organizations a long time to uncover a breach and therefore people should be taught the proper precautions before opening any type of suspicious e-mails, especially in their workplace where this can affect others and the network they share. I feel like the percentages of recipients who open phishing e-mails will decrease in the future, as people are taught to distinguish the difference between a legitimate e-mail and a phishing e-mail.