Hills partner, SonicWall, has released its 2021 cyber threat report which contains comprehensive information about cyber threats that were faced in 2020.
“It is vital that we expand our thinking from just “How are we going to prevent an attack?” to also include “What will we do when (not if) we get attacked?” said SonicWall’s Bill Conner.
In the report, 2020 was referred to as the cybercriminals’ perfect storm, arguing that the combination of new remote workers and a general state of confusion and panic felt all over the world was the perfect landscape for the opportunistic nature of cybercriminals.
2020 saw a massive powershift with cybercriminals gaining the upper hand through the exponential increase in opportunities presented by the decreased security of a world that had to learn to engage remotely without any preparation.
Cyberattackers not only took advantage of the landscape that COVID-19 created, but also the virus itself. Attackers capitalised on peoples fear and confusion with malicious apps disguised as COVID-19 tracking or information.
Year on year overall cyberattacks saw a considerable increase in 2020. With a steep increase in the use of home devices and networks, IoT attacks saw the largest increase of 66 per cent to 56.9 million attacks.
Ransomware attacks had the 2nd biggest increase with 62 per cent and 304.6 million attacks. While there were 5.6 billion malware attacks, the actual percentage year on year went down 43 per cent. Data breaches were a positive note in 2020 with the largest breach, Estee Lauder affecting 440 million which was less than a quarter of 2019’s largest breach which affect more than 2 billion.
Intrusion attempts were by far the most prevalent form of cyberattack with 4.8 trillion incidents, up 20 per cent from the 2019 figures.
To read the full report click here.
#sen.news
