Account Takeover (ATO) & Lateral Phishing

 Access to accounts with strong influence is the holy grail for cyber criminals and a key to infecting multiple different accounts successfully with identity theft. Data compromise account takeover or a TO is problematic as it not only allows threat actors to use an account to impersonate victims' trusted coworkers, but it also provides a foothold where the bad actor will perform an attack known as lateral phishing to continue leveraging this trust to move throughout an organization to attempt to gain access to as many accounts as they can within it.

This gives the intruder time and ability to bypass normal protections to take advantage of internal weaknesses, often leading to a data breach and ransomware resulting in business disruption. To help your business protect against damaging cyber incidents that result in the compromise of business email accounts, let Guardian digital educate you on the anatomy of an account takeover.

And lateral phishing attack, phase one credential theft. An attacker obtains legitimate login credentials via a phishing attack designed to trick a victim into sharing sensitive information or manipulating psychology with social engineering scams. Phase two reconnaissance and weaponization. The intruder explores the compromised email account to gain insight into the user's communications in order to find their targets while preparing to deceive them with the account they have compromised.

In the meantime, while they're preparing for the lateral phishing attacks. Attackers have the opportunity to take advantage of the confidential information in the account. They have already compromised for personal gain.

Having an email security solution capable of identifying and intersecting account takeover and lateral phishing attacks and other malicious threats in real time can mitigate risk and provide you and your organization. With peace of mind, guardian Digital OnGuard Cloud email security makes email safer for business, leveraging technology that proactively learns and distributes defenses for the specific threats targeting your company along with the expert ongoing system management required to keep your business secure.

Phase three delivery: The cybercriminal sends dangerous phishing emails to employees in the target organization, spreading malicious URLs or attachments until another user takes the bait. They could also use social engineering to trick users into making wire transfers or sharing sensitive information, as they have a better chance of doing so by using the actual account of those the victim trusts.

As you can see, these attacks are highly effective in continuing and magnifying the damage inflicted on target organizations.

Phase four, reap the rewards. Now it's payday for the attacker. The malicious actor obtains financial gains or sensitive data that could be used in future malicious campaigns via exploitation of the targeted users driving the never-ending and astronomically profitable cycle of cybercrime.