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Phishing emails are most likely to try to capitalise on trust in IT departments, prompting you to reveal financial and security information under the guise of an official internal enquiry, according to the latest FireEye/Mandiant 2014 Threat Report.

Most (44%) of phishing emails try to impersonate the IT departments of the targeted organisations.

And the vast majority of these emails were sent on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday with Wednesday being the high threat day.

This chart shows the incidents of phishing by day of the week. The numbers are a ratio. Wednesday is seven times more likely to have phising attack than Saturday.

The most likely day to be hit by a phishing attack is Wednesday. FireEye/Mandiant 2014 Threat Report

The FireEye/Mandiant 2014 Threat Report says the time it takes to detect a compromise continues to improve.

The median number of days attackers were present on a victim’s network before being discovered dropped to 229 days in 2013 from 243 in 2012.

However, organisations can be breached for years without knowing. The longest time an attacker was present before being detected in 2013 was six years and three months.

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