Email Security Market Worth
Email security is increasingly growing, reaching new market caps that were imaginable before. An average employee reports receiving more than 49 phishing emails posing a significant risk to industries such as healthcare, finance, and tech. Although this figure seems insignificant, considering the size of a large corporate’s workforce, one mistake could cost hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars. The year-on-year growth of email security threats increases awareness among companies of all sizes. CTOs and I.T departments continually endeavor to improve cybersecurity efforts by combating social engineering attacks and malware email mules.
Impact of email security threats
In 2021, email cyber threats increased by 50% when compared with 2020. When those statistics translate to the impact on companies, it shows that around 60% of companies face at least one form of cyberattack. Some organizations are reporting 925 cyberattacks per week around the world.
Verizon’s data breach report stated that 85% of successful cyberattacks were caused by human error. Social engineering attacks such as phishing are the most common email security threats that exploit human error.
The FBI Internet Crime division estimates financial loss due to phishing attacks at $1.2 billion from the successful hacks reported to their complaint center. Email security breaches are the most expensive cyber attacks on companies. When categorized, Business Email Compromise breaches take first prize, and phishing attacks are second.
Significant market drivers
A significant portion of cybersecurity organization budgets is invested toward finding solutions to increasing social engineering attacks using emails. All the investment contributed to reducing or neutralizing email security threats is a major market driver for this niche sector.
The demand for innovative solutions in this sector has been manifested by how much was invested in one email security startup. Back in 2016, an email security startup raised more than $22 million before phishing attacks, and other social engineering tactics were so widespread.
With technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) reaching a new level of maturity, billions of dollars are collectively being invested in email security. Additionally, this form of cybersecurity is not only being used by large corporations only but also by smaller companies, driving the market cap through the roof.
High-risk company statistics
The financial services industry ranks at a potentially higher risk to face cyberattacks. Recent statistics reveal that the finance sector faces 300x more risk than organizations in other industries. Sub sectors such as community banks and wealth managers carry a weighty responsibility of preventing all attacks. The majority of security threats facing finance organizations stem from human error blindly falling for social engineering tactics.
Not to mention the immeasurable amount of client-facing social engineering attacks using emails impersonating community banks. In 2020, the healthcare industry saw an increase of about 55.1% in phishing attacks.
Unfortunately, in the process, more than 12,000 patient medical records were exposed in a single attack on one particular healthcare organization. Subsequently, both these sectors were flagged as high-risk of being infiltrated through email security attacks.
Increasing demand for email security
From 2020, email security is experiencing increasingly high demand, reaching new market caps with year-on-year peak growth. Most of this demand is attributed to digital transformation amongst small to large businesses. If you want to grow your business online, it is critical to have strict cybersecurity policies and actionable strategies in place.
With the rise in e-commerce and online consumer platforms, email is the most used method of communication. Consumers lay complaints using emails and expect periodical correspondence from companies.
That increases the demand for email security, especially when considering the wealth of data collected on customers by companies. Suffering a ransomware attack injected by email can prove to be detrimental for companies storing sensitive consumer data.
Current email security market cap
Email security is often an independent sub-sector alongside other niche cybersecurity subsectors. With the rising demand for specialized email security technologies and strategies, this cybersecurity subsector has been benchmarked separately. The market cap for email security far exceeds statistical forecasts from 2020.
During these two years, there were rapid digital transformation developments. For example, the remote workforce unexpectedly grew due to factors such as the pandemic and subsequent company cost reduction efforts.
In 2020, email security was forecasted to reach a $3.52 billion market cap 2021. This is a 12.2% compounding growth. However, this market exceeded those predictions by scoring a $4.2 billion cap in 2021. The compounding growth almost exceeds $1 billion from the previous year, indicating potential prospects for this cybersecurity subsector.
Growth forecasts
Given the previous annual compounding growth statistics and considering newer industry players developing email security technologies, there is high potential for this sector.
The investment figures made to tackle email security threats in the future are hard to speculate. Market Research Future (MRFR) however, have a conservative report. This report details potential growth prospects using a variety of categories. These include the type of security coverage, key player activity, and so forth.
The collective conservative estimate MRFR forecasted for this sector peering into 2026 is 16.2% CAGR. A 16.2% CAGR figure estimates the email security market size to reach $6.8 billion by the year 2026.
Technologies being implemented
The tools and strategies that intend to combat social engineering attacks are vastly diverse. Some low-end solutions are basic malware scans on email attachments, but these do not offer full coverage.
Advanced tools now offer comprehensive deep scans of all incoming mail elements. That includes deeply scanning the sender’s information, such as domain authenticity. The advanced tools combat email security use AI/ML technology to scan all incoming mail before it gets to the end user’s mailbox.
Once the email is in the end user’s mailbox, it is either a social engineering attack or safe to open. It will be exciting to see the developments from additional investments improving email security in the immediate future.
