Mimecast Announces Enhancements To QR Code Protections

Mimecast Limited (Mimecast), an advanced email and collaboration security company, today announced that it has enhanced its Quick Response (QR) code protections to better serve current and future customers. Mimecast Email Security is now engineered to include deep scanning of URLs tied to QR codes, and upon inspection, malicious content will be blocked.

In 2023, there was a massive uptick in QR code attacks, commonly referred to as ‘quishing’, and there are no signs the attack method will slow down in 2024. Threat actors deliver emails with QR codes that point to fake sites in an effort to steal credentials or perform other malicious activities. These attempts are difficult to detect as often people do not view QR codes as a danger.

They have become commonplace for many legitimate uses such as restaurant menus, sign-up forms, competitions, online payments (scan-to-pay), and other useful online activities.

According to Mimecast’s The State of Email Security 2023 Report, 92% of South African companies have been targeted by email-based attacks, and 68% have experienced an increase in email-based threats over the same period. With ‘quishing’ on the rise internationally, South African companies are sure to be targeted through this attack vector.

The Global Threat Intelligence Report found overall attacks with malicious links increased by 22% in Q3 of 2023 compared to Q2. The threat intelligence report, based on the processing of more than one billion emails per day on behalf of 42,000 global customers, found that inserting QR codes into the body of an email to deliver malicious links is a widely used tactic by cybercriminals and threat actors.

These new product enhancements directly address this issue, as Mimecast Email Security is designed to identify QR codes in the body of an email and extract the URL for deep scanning. Enhanced ‘quishing’ protection will help employee inboxes stay safe, further enabling customer organisations to Work Protected.

“Operating in one of the most advanced economies in Africa and the Global South, South African companies are prime targets by cyber threat actors, and this is not lost on them. With collaboration at the heart of business operations, nearly 95% of companies agree that they need stronger protection than what comes with popular collaboration tools.  The rise of QR code attacks is adding an additional layer of threat for local organisations,” said Brian Pinnock, VP of Sales Engineering. “At Mimecast, we are continuously innovating to meet our customers’ needs, and we are tackling this growing attack vector head-on to keep local organisations secure and our economy growing.”

Deep scanning of QR code URLs is now live within Mimecast Email Security, and more enhancements to combat ‘quishing’ will follow.

Mimecast: Work Protected™

Since 2003, Mimecast has stopped bad things from happening to good organizations by enabling them to Work Protected. We empower more than 40,000 customers to help mitigate risk and manage complexities across a threat landscape driven by malicious cyberattacks, human error, and technology fallibility.

Our advanced solutions provide the proactive threat detection, brand protection, awareness training, and data retention capabilities that evolving workplaces need today. Mimecast solutions are designed to transform email and collaboration security into the eyes and ears of organizations worldwide.

Mimecast and Work Protected are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Mimecast Services Limited in the United States and/or other countries. All rights reserved. All other third-party trademarks contained in this press release are the property of their respective owners.

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