Throughout the last 12 months, Green Radar analyzed millions of phishing attacks and malicious email activities targeting enterprises, their employees, and brands. The inauguration issue of Green Radar Email Threat Index (GRETI) makes use of the data of 2022 to present key trends shaping the threat landscape. Results presented are extrapolated based on attack volume, frequency and impact levels riding on common malicious email activities. Security leaders and practitioners can use this information to better understand these threats and to take proactive measures to reduce risk.

Email scams have rapidly become a huge issue, with Singapore police force reported $56.2m over 93 cases, lost to scammers alone in the first three months of 2022. This is almost 10 per cent of the $633.3 million lost to all scams in Singapore in 2021. This builds on a grim review by the Cyber Security Agency (CSA) which stated that ransomware, locally hosted phishing, malwares etc were all on the increase in 2021, with an overall cybercrime increase of 38% year-on-year vs 2020, and this trend appears to set to continue into 2022. It should be noted that recovery of monetary proceeds from these scams are often difficult if successful, and next to impossible once the funding has been transferred out of the country.

Since email attacks primarily targets commercial organizations, holding it to ransom, attacks or fraudulent financial scams, it is imperative that they understand the current threat landscape, and thus making appropriate cybersecurity policies in securing their organizations. Readers must also consider the prevalent shortage in local IT and cybersecurity professionals’ availability, making the fight to secure our infrastructure all the more challenging.

Core trends and figures shown in GRETI reports exclude malevolent emails from already-known sources, thus the focus is on malicious email activities that were not seen before and thus by-passing signature-based protections.