Cybersecurity Trends & Statistics; More Sophisticated And Persistent Threats So Far In 2023

in #cyberlast year

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The pace of technological innovation has led to a transformation in many areas of our lives. In 2023, although it is only Spring, the impact of emerging technologies including artificial intelligence/machine learning, 5G, IoT, and quantum are significantly impacting everything connected to the internet.

The introduction of these potentially disruptive technologies do have implications on cybersecurity and the challenges of keeping us safe. In particular, AI is the hot topic of focus as generative artificial intelligence can leverage ChatGPT-powered for code, and ai/machine learning to amplify social engineering capabilities and help identify target vulnerabilities for hackers. These evolving tech trends and statistics are already telling a story for 2023.

As data continues to be produced and stored in greater volumes, and as connectivity greatly expands globally on the internet, the attack surface has become more exploitable with gaps and vulnerabilities for criminal and nation state hackers. And they are taking advantage.

In fact, the global cyber-attacks Rose by 7% already in Q1 2023. “Weekly cyber-attacks have increased worldwide by 7% in Q1 2023 compared to the same period last year, with each firm facing an average of 1248 attacks per week. The figures come from Check Point’s latest research report, which also suggests that the education and research sector experienced the highest number of attacks, rising to an average of 2507 per organization per week (a 15% increase compared to Q1 2022). The Check Point report also shows that 1 in 31 organizations worldwide experienced a ransomware attack weekly over the first quarter of 2023.” Global Cyber Attacks Rise by 7% in Q1 2023 - Infosecurity Magazine (infosecurity-magazine.com)

In addition, key malware statistics for 2023 are adding to cybersecurity difficulties. It is estimated that 560,000 new pieces of malware are detected every day and that there are now more than 1 billion malware programs circulating. This translates to four companies falling victim to ransomware attacks every minute. A Not-So-Common Cold: Malware Statistics in 2023 (dataprot.net)
getty THE SUPPLY CHAIN NEEDS CYBERSECURITY BOLSTERING
One of the biggest vulnerabilities for cyber-attacks has been on the supply chain. This was highlighted by the Colonial Pipeline and Solar Winds breaches and many others. It is a formidable task to protect any business or organization from the bast array of cyber- attacks, but when they are part of a supply chain with other parties or vendors, it becomes even a larger challenge. The reality is that 9 out of 10 companies have recently detected software supply chain security risks.

“Reversing Labs Software Supply Chain Risk Survey found that nearly 90% of technology professionals detected significant risks in their software supply chain in the last year. More than 70% said that current application security solutions aren't providing necessary protections. More than 300 global executives, technology and security professionals at all seniority levels directly responsible for software at enterprise companies, were surveyed for the study.”

“Nearly all respondents (98%) recognized that software supply chain issues pose a significant business risk, citing concerns beyond code with vulnerabilities, secrets exposures, tampering and certificate misconfigurations. Interestingly, more than half of technology professionals (55%) cited secrets leaked through source code as a serious business risk followed by malicious code (52%) and suspicious code (46%).”9 out of 10 companies detected software supply chain security risks | Security Magazine

And data released from Black Kite’s 2023 Ransomware Landscape Report finds the number of ransomware victims announced in March 2023 was nearly double that of April 2022 and 1.6 times higher than the peak month in 2022. Other key findings from April 1, 2022, through March 31, 2023, include:

The top targeted industries were Manufacturing (19.5%), Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services (15.3%), and Educational Services (6.1%).
The United States was the top targeted country, accounting for 43% of victim organizations, followed by the UK (5.7%) and Germany (4.4%).
Ransomware groups tend to target companies with annual revenues of around $50M to $60M, with third-party vendors often being targeted for client information extortion.
The top ransomware groups during the analysis period included Lockbit (29%), AlphaVM (BlackCat) (8.6%), and Black Basta (7.2%).
Black Kite Research: Ransomware Attacks Resurge with Victims Doubling in 2023 (yahoo.com)

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