A review of 10,072,682 emails revealed 203,000 malicious links within were deemed safe by security systems – a ratio of one unstopped malicious link for every 50 emails inspected.

The Mimecast report also found an 80% increase impersonation attacks in comparison to last quarters’ report with 41,605 caught. Additionally, 19,086,877 pieces of spam, 13,176 emails containing dangerous file types, and 15,656 malware attachments were all missed by these incumbent providers and delivered to users’ inboxes.

“Targeted malware, heavily socially-engineered impersonation attacks, and phishing threats are still reaching employee inboxes. This leaves organizations at risk of a data breach and financial loss,” said Matthew Gardiner, cybersecurity strategist at Mimecast. “Our latest quarterly analysis saw a continued attacker focus on impersonation attacks quarter-on-quarter. These are difficult attacks to identify without specialized security capabilities, and this testing shows that commonly used systems aren’t doing a good job catching them.”

Additionally, Mimecast uncovered:

• 19M+ pieces of spam missed by incumbent providers and delivered to users’ inboxes
• 13,100+ dangerous file types missed by incumbent providers and delivered to users’ inboxes
• 15,600+ malware attachments missed by incumbent providers and delivered to users’ inboxes