Over 50% of personal devices were exposed to a mobile phishing attack

blue screen with code and the word hacked in white

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According to a recent report, mobile phishing is on the rise. Lookout's mobile phishing report found that 2022 had the highest percentage of mobile phishing encounter rates ever, with an average of more than 30% of personal and enterprise users exposed to these attacks every quarter.

Research also found that users on all devices — whether personal or work provided — are tapping more on mobile phishing links in comparison to two years ago.

Mobile phishing attacks are also growing more sophisticated. The share of mobile users in enterprise environments clicking on more than six malicious links annually has jumped from 1.6% in 2020 to 11.8% in 2022, indicating that users are having a tougher time distinguishing phishing messages from legitimate communications.

Report findings also include:

The potential annual financial impact of mobile phishing to an organization of 5,000 employees is nearly $4 million.
Since 2021, mobile phishing encounter rates have increased roughly 10% for enterprise devices and more than 20% for personal devices.
In 2022, more than 50% of personal devices were exposed to a mobile phishing attack every quarter.
The percentage of users falling for multiple mobile phishing links in a year is increasing rapidly year over year.
Organizations operating in highly regulated industries — including insurance, banking, legal, healthcare and financial services — were the most heavily targeted enterprises.
Non-email based phishing attacks are growing rapidly, with vishing (voice phishing), smishing (SMS phishing) and quishing (QR code phishing) increasing seven-fold in the second quarter of 2022.

Mobile phishing is one of the most effective tactics to steal login credentials, which means that mobile phishing itself poses significant security, compliance and financial risk to organizations in every industry. It is likely that the rise of remote work has contributed to this, as organizations relax bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies to accommodate employees accessing corporate networks outside the traditional security perimeter.

The report is available for download here.

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