Threat actors are taking aim at the financial tech sector and upping the ante when it comes to email attacks. That’s according to research from Abnormal Security that found increases year over year in advanced email attacks (23%) and phishing (17%), with business email compromises largely staying stable.

Surprisingly, the most successful attacks are ones that ask for a simple favor. Those attacks work so well, Abnormal Field CISO Mick Leach told IT Brew, because people tend to be ready to help.

“Bad actors seek to prey on employees’ kindness and desire to assist,” Leach said, adding that financial institutions are “more susceptible and they’re more inclined to pay to protect the sensitive data of their folks, as well as the financial assets that they have under management.”

Letterbox. The increase in email attacks—as opposed to social engineering and malware—could be seen as a continuation of what some in the cybersecurity industry refer to as the attack atmosphere. Conceptually separate from the attack “surface,” the “atmosphere” refers to a diversity of tactics by threat actors. Chris Goettl, VP of product management at Ivanti, told IT Brew that the atmosphere is a change that was inevitable.

See why financial firms are open to ‘reciprocity’ attacks.—EH

Like Paris Hilton in 2003, Amazon Web Services (AWS) wants cybersecurity professionals to embrace the simple life.

AWS CISO Amy Herzog took the stage on day two of the company’s annual re:Inforce conference this week in Philadelphia to share some of the cloud giant’s latest security innovations, each aiming to simplify capabilities on existing tools. Herzog took on the role as CISO of the cloud giant earlier this month, replacing Chris Betz. She was previously CISO for Amazon’s AGI, ads, devices, and global media and entertainment units.

New identity. Herzog kicked off Tuesday’s keynote by announcing updates to AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), the cloud giant’s web service that allows organizations to manage who has access to AWS resources. She said IAM, launched in 2011, was designed to “address the complex needs of modern cloud authentication and authorization at a massive scale,” and handles 1.2 billion API calls per second worldwide, she said.

“That means that 1.2 billion times per second, IAM is asked to determine if an API call should be permitted or denied,” she said.

New access analysis tools are available.—BM