Email security specialist Avanan has produced a new report entitled Keeping Your Emails Secure: Who Does it Best?

The report found that 18.8% of phishing emails bypassed Microsoft Exchange Online Protection.

This means Defender’s missed phishing rates have increased by a staggering 74% since the last report was conducted in 2020.

Avanan, a Check Point company, reveals:

· 18.8% of phishing emails evaded Microsoft Defender which is a 74% increase from the last report that was conducted in 2020;

· Targeted financial attacks are specifically crafted to bypass Defender, it misses 42% of these attacks;

· SOC Teams spending up 23% of their time manually managing email problems. One organization spends 2,500 hours a year just reviewing suspicious email reports from end-users. That’s the equivalent of 104 days, impacting productivity;

· “Dumpster Diving”: Defender sends 7% of phishing messages to the Junk folder. End-users dive into the Junk folder, looking for legitimate messages and may act on a phishing email by mistake;

· Microsoft Defender missed more phishing emails when deployed in larger organizations. The missed phishing rate for two large organizations in our research was 50-70%;

· Layering an additional level of inline email security on top of Microsoft or other email platforms is recommended.