Security News > 2020 > July > Hackers will lurk in your email for more than a week after breaking in
Hackers could be lurking in your email account for more than a week after hijacking it to harvest information before selling it off to other criminals, a new report from Barracuda Networks has warned.
A study carried out by Barracuda and UC Berkeley found that just over a third of hacked corporate email accounts sustained attacks for more than a week, during which time attackers would monitor how the organisation did business so that they could launch subsequent phishing attacks.
According to Barracuda, our reliance on using email to store increasingly large amounts of sensitive information - whether for convenience or otherwise - means that our inboxes could contain much of the valuable information hackers need without them having to look elsewhere.
Being informed about attacker behavior can help organisations put proper protection in place to defend against these types of attacks, said Don MacLennan, SVP engineering of email protection at Barracuda.
This includes implementing AI-based threat-monitoring software to automate the detection of email account breaches, better password management and using data forensics technology to help remediate attacks after they've taken place.