New Delhi, Feb 9 (IANS): Indian organisations are among the most likely to be hit with a successful email attack, and those affected faced an average potential cost of over $1 million (approx Rs 8.2 crore) for their most expensive attack, a new report said on Thursday.

About 82 per cent of the Indian organisations surveyed had fallen victim to at least one successful email attack in the last 12 months, according to IT security firm Barracuda Networks.

"Email-based attacks can be the initial access point for a wide range of cyber threats, including ransomware, information stealers, spyware, crypto mining, other malware, and more. It is not surprising that IT teams around the world don't feel fully prepared to defend against many email-based threats," said Parag Khurana, Country Manager, Barracuda Networks India.

"Growing awareness and understanding of email risks and the robust protection needed to stay safe will be key in keeping organisations and their employees protected in 2023 and beyond," he added.

Moreover, the report said that the most widely email-borne security attacks reported in India were brand and company reputation damage (49 per cent), hurt the reputation of the IT team (48 per cent), and downtime and business disruption (43 per cent).

Nearly 36 per cent of Indian organisations said that the cost of email-based attacks has risen dramatically over the last year.

Further, the report mentioned that about 32 per cent of Indian organisations have increased their spending in the past 12 months in improving their email security.

However, around 45 per cent of Indian organisations feel underprepared to deal with email account takeover, closely followed by viruses and malware (38 per cent), data loss (35 per cent), and business email compromise (35 per cent).