State of Brand Protection

Marketers aim to use the right message to reach the right customer at the right time. That’s exactly what cybercriminals do, too — except they’re stealing your brand to sell their “product.”

In 2020, cybercriminals exploited the world’s fear and uncertainty about COVID-19 to dramatically escalate email phishing campaigns and other malicious attacks that impersonate brands in order to trade on those brands’ customer trust. Based on Mimecast’s threat intelligence monitoring:
* The number of brand impersonation emails per month detected en route to Mimecast customers rose 44% in 2020 over 2019 to an average of nearly 27 million.*
* Companies on the BrandZ™ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands 2020 list experienced a 381% spike in brand impersonation attacks during the two months of May and June 2020 over January-February (before the pandemic hit).
* New domains suspected of brand impersonation also spiked, up 366% in May-June 2020.
* And the unfortunate result: Monthly unwitting clicks on dangerous links soared 84.5% over the course of the year.