Last month, L.a. County reported one of the largest phishing attacks in the United States. A single phishing campaign directed at Los Angeles County employees saw an incredible 108 individuals fall for the scam. Each employee that responded to the campaign inadvertently divulged their email credentials to the attacker. 108 email accounts were compromised as a result of the one phishing campaign.

While it is not known whether the individual behind the campaign successfully retrieved any data from L.A County email accounts, the compromised email accounts were a treasure trove of sensitive information. The email accounts contained the sensitive information of more than 750,000 individuals.

While the announcement of the phishing attack was only made in December, the actual incident occurred on May 13, 2016. In contrast to the phishing and spam email campaigns of old that contained numerous spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and bordered on the unbelievable, this campaign was expertly crafted. The attacker used realistic text and images, hence the reason why such a large number of employees fell for the scam.

Fortunately for L.A. County, the phishing attack was identified promptly – within 24 hours – therefore limiting the damage caused. A detailed forensic investigation revealed that 756,000 individuals had their sensitive information – including Social Security numbers and protected health information- exposed as a result of the attack.

There was further good news. The lengthy investigation confirmed the identity of the attacker, a Nigerian national – Austin Kelvin Onaghinor. A warrant has been issued for his arrest. Bringing that individual to justice may be another matter. Extraditing foreign nationals to the United States can be a difficult and long winded process. However, L.A District Attorney Jackie Lacey has vowed to “aggressively to bring this criminal hacker and others to Los Angeles County, where they will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

Phishing attacks on this scale are unfortunately not that rare. Cybercriminals are becoming much better at crafting convincing emails and gaining access to corporate email accounts. All too often, the phishing attacks are not identified quickly, giving criminals plenty of time to exfiltrate data from compromised accounts. Many phishing campaigns are conducted to obtain network credentials and other information that can be used to gain a foothold in corporate networks. Once access is gained, all manner of nefarious activities take place.

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This L.A. County phishing scam clearly demonstrates that employees are the weakest link in the security chain, which is why cybercriminals are committing more time and effort into phishing attacks. It is far easier to compromise an email account or gain access to a network if an employee provides their login credentials than attempting to find a chink in advanced cybersecurity defenses.

Protecting against phishing attacks requires an advanced spam filtering solution. Without such a solution in place, organizations have to rely on employees identifying emails as malicious. Something which is becoming much harder to do as cybercriminals perfect their social engineering techniques.

Blocking phishing emails and preventing them from being delivered to inboxes is the single-most effective solution to counter the phishing threat. Along with staff anti-phishing training and anti-phishing exercises, organizations can mount a defense against such attacks and avoid the not inconsiderable mitigation costs. Providing credit monitoring and identity theft protection services to 756,000 individuals is a sizeable cost for any organization to absorb.