2.5 Billion Email Users Urged To Change Password — Act Now

Forbes

07-07-2025

Chnage your passwrod now as email attacks continue.
What if I were to tell you that hackers are coming for your email account password? You probably wouldn't be that surprised; it's a valuable criminal commodity, after all. But what if a well-respected threat response unit told you that those attacks targeting user credentials and authentication mechanisms now accounted for nearly 60% of identity-based attacks in 2025? Or that email account compromise cases have spiked by more than 60% year-on-year? Are you listening now? Good, because major email platfiorms Gmail and Outlook, who between them account for more than 2.5 billion active users, want you to change your password, and do so now. Here's what you need to know and do.
Change Your Email Account Password Now As Attacks Surge
A July 7 identity threat report from the eSentire Threat Response Unit has confirmed what most of us in the broader cybersecurity industry, as well as most of you, I suspect, already knew: email accounts are under attack. And how. 'TRU's threat data presents a stark reality,' the report's introduction said, 'identity-driven threats have increased by 156% between 2023 and 2025, now representing 59% of all confirmed threat cases during Q1 2025.' This surge is being driven by Cybercrime-as-a-Service, and more precisely Phishing-as-a-Service, offerings that attackers can hire for as little as $200 per month. No wonder, then, that email compromise has increased by 60%, and more than 40% of all attacks this year so far have involved account takeover or compromise, according to eSentire's analysis. Your password is no longer good enough, dear reader, to protect you and your email account from the onslaught of increasingly sophisticated and devastating hack attacks.
Which is why both Google and Microsoft have been urging all users to adopt the far more secure passkey alternative for some months now.
Passkeys are effortless to create and use, automatically generated with no room for human error and nothing to remember. They are also strong by default, phishing and social-engineering resistant, and totally private. A passkey private key never leaves your device.
The question here shouldn't be why you need to replace your email passwords with passkeys, but why haven't you already done so? So, what are you waiting for?