Be on guard, internet: Phishing cyberattacks and other social engineering exploits such as "vishing" (voice phishing) and "smishing" (SMS/text phishing), are on the rise, according to new data from cybersecurity firm Proofpoint.

For its fifth annual State of the Phish Report, released Thursday, the cybersecurity firm polled around 15,000 information security professionals around the world about their views of the threat landscape and experiences with phishing. Almost all of them (96 percent) said the rate of phishing attacks remained the same or increased in 2018.

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Eighty-three percent of respondents said they experienced phishing attacks last year, up from 76 percent who said the same in 2017. Around half (49 percent) experienced vishing and/or smishing, up from 45 percent a year earlier, and 4 percent faced USB-based social engineering attacks via infected thumb drives, up from 3 percent.

Proofpoint also found that spear-phishing attacks, which target a specific individual or organization, are becoming more prevalent. Sixty-four percent of respondents faced these highly-targeted attacks last year, up from 53 percent in 2017.

Credit: proofpoint

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