• by Jess Nelson , January 27, 2016

Email-based spear phishing attacks cost companies an estimated $1.6 million per incident, according to a recent study by security company Cloudmark.

These attacks target businesses and organizations to steal private information such as financial accounts, intellectual property and customer data. Hackers often pose as individuals within a company or might attempt to build rapport by sending several safe emails before including any malware.

Spear phishing crimes can range from for profit attacks and wire fraud attacks to state-sponsored attacks on businesses or governments. Recent high-profile spear phishing victims include Sony, Ashley Madison and Anthem.

Spear phishing attacks are also on the rise, reports the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG), which released an Internet security report in December illustrating how both consumer-facing phishing attacks and business-targeted spear phishing attacks steadily increased over 2015.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation even released an alert due to the 270% increase in business email compromise (BEC) attacks from January to August 2015.

Luckily, the marketplace to combat spear phishing is accelerating in tandem with cybercrime, with Enterprise software developer Fujitsu recently presenting new technology that detects email attacks in real-time at the Symposium in Cryptography and Information Security in 2015. Powered by artificial intelligence, the product sends real-time alerts for any email or behavioral anomalies that might correlate to an email attack.