Barracuda research identifies gaps in email security standards

New research has exposed weaknesses in email security practices among Australian employees.

Cloud security solutions company Barracuda has published a new report — The State of Cyber Resilience in Australia 2022 — revealing 60 per cent of employees assume links in emails are safe to click on if the message is sent from a corporate email system.

Further, 22 per cent said it is acceptable to download and install unapproved software onto devices used for work.

This comes as the majority (51 per cent) of employees revealed they had been directly impacted by a cyber attack in the last 12 months.

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The study involved a survey of 504 Australian IT decision-makers and non-IT workers organisations of at least 50 employees.

According to Mark Lukie, sales engineering director, Barracuda APAC, hybrid work environments may have led to increased complacency among employees.

“We also uncovered a lack of awareness regarding cyber security that could be leaving organisations exposed,” he said.

“Australian organisations need to urgently review their hybrid and work-from-home environments, commit to the adoption of best security practices like the Australian Cyber Security Centre’s Essential Eight framework, and provide cyber security hygiene refresher training to staff, in order to protect against today’s evolving email threats, application vulnerabilities and the ever-present risk of data breaches.”

The Barracuda research also identified limited use of multi-factor authentication (MFA) among Australian businesses, with 40 per cent of the respondents stating they do not have MFA in place but rely on password management to protect credentials.