Halloween Horror – Cybersecurity Statistics!

Cybercrime is undisputedly the largest threat to organisations in the world. Most companies take nearly half a year to detect a data breach – even the big ones! The torment of consequences ranging from the financial, reputational, and regulatory is unparalleled, and it haunts businesses regardless of industry, size, and location – cybercrime does not discriminate.

Terror in numbers:

If anything is certain in cybersecurity, it’s DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Services) attacks. Imperva this year faced an absolutely COLOSSAL attack of this kind, a record-breaking, sustained DDoS attack, that mitigated an eye-watering 25.3 BILLION requests, measuring 3.9 MILLION Requests per Second – meaning it was sustained over several hours!

Not only are attacks getting bigger, but they’re getting more frequent too – Serious DDoS attacks (Over 500GBps) rose by a ridiculous 287% through Q2 2022, with 91% of Network-layer DDoS attacks being targeted AGAIN within 24 HOURS! This will only increase through Q3 & Q4, so you need to be prepared!

This Halloween, for cybersecurity month, lets dive into some scary statistics from cybersecurity!

Halloween ’22 – Cybersecurity’s Scary Statistics

• 450,000 new malicious programs are registered EVERY DAY
• The probability of a cybercrime entity being detected and prosecuted in the US is estimated at 0.05%.
• More than half of organisations see weekly, or even daily phishing attempts!
• Around 26%, or more than a quarter, of ALL web traffic is bad bot traffic.
• 94% of malware is delivered by email, according to Verizon.
• Only 8% of businesses that pay ransom to hackers receive all their data back.
• On average, a ransomware attack hits a business every 11 seconds.
• DDoS attacks are expected to hit 15.4 Million incidents by 2023, according to a CISCO report.
• 43% of all breaches came from insider threats, both intentional and unintentional.
• 44% of data breaches expose and compromise your PERSONAL data.
• In January 2022, hackers breached crypto.com and stole more than $30MILLION in cryptocurrency from users.
• 95% of cybersecurity breaches are caused by human error, according to an IBM study
• There is a cyberattack every 39 seconds on average, according to a University of Maryland Clark School Study.
• 43% of Cyberattacks target small businesses. 64% of companies have experienced web-based cyberattacks, and 62% have experienced phishing & social engineering attacks. 51% have experienced DDoS attacks, and 59% have experienced botnet and malicious code execution attacks.
• Around 40% of ethical hackers recently surveyed by the SANS Institute said they can break into most environments they test, if not all. Nearly 60% said they need five hours or less to break into a corporate environment once they identify a weakness.
• New findings from Venafi 64% of Businesses Suspect They’ve Been Targeted or Impacted by Nation-State Attacks, with other findings showing that:
  1. 82% believe geopolitics and cybersecurity are intrinsically linked.
  2. 77% believe we’re in a perpetual state of cyberwar
  3. More than two-thirds (68%) have had more conversations with their board and senior management in response to the Russia/Ukraine conflict.
  4. 63% doubt they’d ever know if their organization was hacked by a nation-state.

• Approximately 86% of breaches in 2021 were financially motivated, of all breaches, nearly 40% featured phishing.
• The average cost of a data breach in 2021 was $4.24 Million.
• Since Covid-19, the FBI has shown a 300% increase in cybercrimes reported, and as of summer 2021, they recorded more than 12,000 covid-related scams.
• Most companies take nearly HALF A YEAR to detect data breaches, even major ones!
• According to 2021 analysis by comparitech, share prices dropped an average of 7.27% on average after a breach!
• Cybercrime, if measured as a country, would have the third-largest economy in the WORLD according to research from Cybersecurity Ventures!

• Researchers expect global cybercrime costs to grow to $10.5 TRILLION per Annum in 2025.The Digital Ads world loses $51 MILLION to ad fraud EVERY DAY – a figure that is expected to reach $100 BILLION A YEAR by 2023!
• Cybercrime is vastly undercounted due to the lack of reporting – reputational harm, embarrassment, and the lack of realistic assistance from law enforcement means that, according to some estimates, as few as 10% of the total cybercrimes committed each year are actually reported.

At this point, it is clear to see that Cybersecurity is an everchanging industry, with a constant pressure to adapt and evolve with the threat landscape and attack sophistications consistently pushing us to improve, is it any wonder why the worldwide information security market is expected to reach a value of $366B by 2028? When 68% of business leaders feel their cybersecurity risks are increasing, and only 54% of companies believe their IT department is sophisticated enough to handle advanced cyberattacks, there is no such thing as being TOO prepared to face cybercrime in the future.

Secure IT Consult can provide you with the licensing for the very best-in-class cybersecurity solutions that are available, and we can additionally provide all the professional services you require to maximise your security stack. The human firewall is an essential aspect of any cybersecurity posture now, and your employees need to be aware of the risks and threats they face from an evolving threat landscape that includes social engineering and phishing attacks designed to target the ‘weak link’ – the people on your networks.

How better to do this than with KnowBe4’s industry-leading library of Security Awareness Training, and Phishing simulation templates to analyse your organisations strengths and weaknesses. We partner with the very best in Cybersecurity, and Security Awareness to ensure that we can be your one-stop shop for everything you need to prevent and prevail against the next generation of cybercrimes and stand stalwart against cyberattacks against your organisation.

Conclusion

Cybercrime is a real threat that should be taken seriously. By contacting us to assess your business’s cybersecurity risk, making companywide changes, and improving data protection, it’s possible to guard your business against most data breaches. Don’t become a statistic — the time to change the culture toward improved cybersecurity is now.