The healthcare industry is the worst performing industry for email security according to the 2014 edition of its State of Email Trust report from Agari, a provider of real-time, data-driven security solutions that detect and prevent advanced email cyberattacks.
The study is based on analysis of email authentication practices for 147 companies across 11 industries. It found that 75 percent of US companies surveyed are at high risk of malicious email attacks.
The report identifies spikes and declines in cyberattacks across industries throughout the year, revealing companies and industries never know when attacks may occur, nor can they anticipate their breadth and severity.
The State of Email Trust provides email ‘trust’ ratings, or how well companies are protecting consumers from email cyberthreats, and provides email ‘threat’ ratings (ThreatScore), or the volume of cyberthreats targeted toward any given company’s consumers via email relative to other companies and industries analyzed.
“We saw a record number of US data breaches in 2014 and cyberattacks are a steady drumbeat of increasing breadth and severity, with the F.B.I. now ranking cybercrime as one of its top law enforcement activities,” said Patrick Peterson, founder and chief executive officer of Agari.
“For all its ubiquity and convenience, email remains the single most effective and widely used vector of attack. Our State of Email Trust report shows that companies are starting to take email security more seriously, but there’s still a long, long way to go. One step in the right direction is President Obama’s recent proposed initiatives around data sharing that are critical to securing our ever-growing digital economy.”
The number of US data breaches tracked in 2014 surged 28 percent to 783 from the number reported in 2013, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center. .
Against a backdrop of worrisome healthcare cybersecurity news throughout 2014, the healthcare industry had the worst email TrustScore average of every industry surveyed in all four quarters. Nearly 30 percent of major health insurance companies surveyed scored a TrustScore of zero.
In terms of ‘safe’ companies, there has been progress, as the number of those with perfect 100 TrustScores almost doubled in 2014. But this was still a small increase in numbers, from only seven companies to 13 of the 147 companies whose domains were surveyed.
Risk Managment, IT and Data Security, US, The State of Email Trust, Patrick Peterson, Insurance
