Ninety percent of cyberattacks involve spear phishing, a bogus email pretending to be from a legitimate business or individual, but instead emanating from cybercriminals seeking personally identifiable information, passwords, and financial information.

That is according to San Mateo, Calif.-based security provider Agari's Total Economic Impact study conducted by Forrester Consulting on its behalf.

The threat to businesses, including financial institutions, is they must protect their brand reputation and restore trust in the inbox. “If people don't trust your email, they are not going to trust that legitimate message that you send them,” John Wilson, Agari field chief technology officer said.

Wilson also weighed in on the recent news that hackers stole Yahoo account information, including personal information such as names, passwords, birthdays, and email addresses, of least 500 million users.

The Yahoo data breach, and other incidents involving the release of personally identifiable information, has broader implications than more obvious concerns. “People reuse passwords. If cybercriminals have my Yahoo 2014 password, they are going to get into some accounts that people did not get around to changing,” Wilson pointed out.

“Let's say I didn't hear about the Yahoo breach and they get to log into my account, what are they going to see, are they going to see my bank statements, which I am banking with?”

Accountholders might also have their passwords reset by hackers using stolen information. That is the challenge with passwords, even if an individual does not reuse passwords, they can be vulnerable because of that email/password connection. It is the key to changing a password if a person forgets it.

The Total Economic Impact study examined the return on investment companies can expect when using Agari Customer Protect to prevent email phishing attacks that target consumers and damage company brands. The results showed that for a composite organization, based on interviews with four participating customers, Agari Customer Protect was able to increase customer engagement and grow revenue while reducing operational costs, with a total ROI of 326% and six-month payback period.

Instant Insights /

Restoring Trust in Consumer Inboxes

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