Fortunately for you, they blocked 1000 of these reaching their customers every second.
Recently Microsoft revealed that 35.7 billion malicious emails were directed to their customers last year.
Fortunately for us and you, the tech giant blocked a staggering 1000 of these malicious emails every single second of last year (2021).
The majority of these attempted attacks came in the form of phishing emails. This is where attackers attempt to mislead and trick us into clicking a link that will then install malware onto a device or in some cases across an entire network. Now you can only imagine the headache this could cause people or organisations.
On top of this, it was reported that there were also 9.6 billion attempted brute force attacks stopped in their tracks. This is where a hacker attempts to guess login credentials to access data.
To many Microsoft has been their knight in shining armour without them knowing.
Whilst this is great news for those who rely on Microsoft’s applications on a daily basis, there is still work that all businesses need to do to tighten up security. Although attackers are using simple methods, they are often really effective as both consumers and businesses are failing to protect their credentials properly.
Are you protecting your credentials properly?
For many people, the answer to this is simply no. They are using the same password(s) across multiple accounts and applications, or they are using common passwords that are easy to guess, as well as failing to use clever tools that help keep their data protected.
Are you guilty of this in your business?
If you are, the first step you should take is to introduce multi-factor authentification across the company. This is a highly effective and low-cost way to add an extra layer of security to each one of your accounts and applications. Simply put, it generates a second, single-use login code for your accounts, which can be generated on or sent to your phone so that only you can see it (codes can sometimes be sent to email addresses too). Once the code has been used it then loses all of its credentials and becomes useless meaning if anyone were to find it, it wouldn’t work for them.
In an ideal world, you should use multi-factor authentification for all your accounts.
This is the first step to improving the security of your accounts and applications but you shouldn’t stop there. You should also look at additional security measures, such as:
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Password managers – create strong, impossible-to-guess passwords for all of your accounts, encrypt and store them securely.
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Biometric logins for devices, just like Face ID or fingerprint recognition you probably use on your portable devices.
Feel like your business is lacking in extra layers of security, or want to develop your layers of security?
