Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is being used more and more to deliver mission critical services to business of all sizes. SaaS provides tremendous benefits to businesses, including eliminating the need for a software development team and eliminating expensive patching and upgrades. Examples of SaaS services include customer relationship management (CRM), eCommerce, storage and email delivery.
SaaS business is expected to grow almost 18% this year up to $85 billion, according to Gartner. With an industry that big and growing fast, you knew it wouldn’t be long before it caught the attention of hackers.
According to the APWG Q1 2019 Phishing Activity Trends Report, SaaS/Webmail businesses are now the most targeted businesses for phishing attacks, representing 36% of all targets. It even surpasses attacks on the payment industry (27%).
According to an article on Help Net Security website, “Phishers are interested in stealing logins to SaaS sites because they yield financial data and also personnel data, which can be leveraged for spear-phishing.”
The chances are your business uses SaaS. And if your business is the target of a phishing attack based on that SaaS provider, there’s a good chance it will be effective because it will appear to be an ordinary part of your daily business activity.
That’s why phishing attacks are so successful. They fit right into your daily routine so you don’t notice them. And more and more, that means taking advantage of SaaS.
When it comes to SaaS phishing attacks, it’s difficult to depend on phishing awareness training. Afterall, awareness training is about teaching employees to look for things out of the ordinary. SaaS services used by your company are completely ordinary, so interacting with what appears to be a frequently-used SaaS product will hardly raise suspicion.
It takes SaaS to prevent SaaS phishing
You’re going to need phishing protection technology to protect your company from SaaS phishing attacks. Ironically, the best way to do that is with SaaS: cloud-based email security with real-time link click protection.
As ransomware and malware attacks continue to decline, phishing attacks continue to rise. And they will continue to target the most high profile, profitable and vulnerable parts of your business. And today, that means attacks on SaaS products used by your company.
To protect your company from phishing attacks, including those on SaaS products you use, try PhishProtection risk free for 30 days.