What is phishing?
Phishing refers to attempts to obtain personal data of an Internet user via fake websites and e-mails and to use this data to commit identity theft.
In this process, target persons with deceptively real-looking e-mails are asked to reveal access data. With the mass of daily e-mails and under time pressure, this succeeds regularly.
Economic damage
Cyberattacks have never threatened companies as much as they do today. According to the Allianz Risk Barometer 2022, cyberattacks are now the biggest business risk worldwide.
Whether theft, espionage or sabotage: cyberattacks are considered the greatest threat to business worldwide - even ahead of business interruptions or the COVID19 pandemic.
In a study published in August 2021, Bitkom found that cyberattacks are causing more damage to German companies than ever before. The main culprit is ransomware attacks, which often enter the company via phishing.
Bitkom backs up this finding with concrete figures: According to the study, cyberattacks caused record damage of 220 billion euros to the German economy in 2020/21. This amount of damage was more than twice as high as in 2018/19: at that time, the total was 103 billion euros.
Criminals exploit the "human factor" as the supposed weakest link in the security chain to obtain sensitive data such as passwords, for example.
The more information about the company and its employees is known online and the less trained the employees are, the more likely it is that they will be successfully attacked via an e-mail.
"Companies spend millions of dollars on firewalls and secure access devices, and it's money wasted because none of these measures address the weakest link in the security chain: The people who use, administer and operate computer systems"Kevin Mitnick - the world’s most famous hacker
