People are seven times more likely to receive malicious email from their bank than any other type of company, according to recently released research from email security company Agari.
The unsurprising statistic (given that most hackers are financially motivated) is derived from Agari's quarterly Email TrustIndex survey.
The index measures industries financial services, e-commerce, social media, travel, logistics and gaming using a ThreatScore of one to 10 and a TrustIndex of one to 100.
The ThreatScore banks received, the one that measures the number of attacks banks are under, jumped 122% in the second quarter to 7.14. Financial services companies' TrustIndex, the measure of how well banks are combating hackers, jumped 7% to 39.7.
"The risk is enormous," says Bob Pratt, Agari's vice president of products. "Unfortunately it is a case of criminals going where the money is."
The San Mateo, Calif. company studied data from its clients JPMorgan Chase and SunTrust among them and the internet service providers with which it does business to draw conclusions about the types of attacks banks are under as well as how well they are combatting these attacks with technology.
Agari supports a security standard that helps email service providers flag illegitimate messages purporting to be from banks and others.
"The banks get taken advantage of a lot," says Pratt. "Your bank sends you legitimate email all the time, we are used to getting those types of messages and clicking on the links, so unfortunately, they provide a very ripe vector" for attacks.
