Orange Cyberdefense, Europe’s largest managed security services provider, reveals that there has been a 13 per cent increase in cyberattacks on businesses over the past 12 months, with a rise in ransomware incidents and, for the first time, a wave of attacks against mobile devices.
The data shows that of the 94,806 cyberattack incidents flagged as being potential threats, 36 per cent were legitimate security incidents – a 13 per cent increase on the year before. 38% of all confirmed security incidents were classified as malware, including ransomware – an increase of 18 per cent in 2020. The report found that 64 per cent of the security alerts dealt with by Orange Cyberdefense analysts turned out to be “noise” and did not represent a genuine cyber-attack – an increase of five per cent on the previous year.
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The findings suggest that many organisations, particularly small and medium sized businesses, will require more resources to filter this massive amount of data for cyber-attacks.
The Security Navigator also reports that mobile operating systems like in a business context are an increasingly popular target for cyber-attacks. Many of the attacks appear to be related to commercial companies contracted by law enforcement and intelligence agencies. However, analysts believe that the programs used to launch the attacks will find their way into the criminal ecosystem, highlighting the WannaCry attack of 2017.
Another key finding is that malware, including ransomware, was the most common type of threat reported, with 38 per cent of all confirmed security incidents classified as malware – an increase of 18 per cent on 2020.
Key malware trends:
- A decrease in confirmed downloader activity (malware that downloads and runs other malware on affected systems) in November and December 2020 after the Trickbot botnet was taken down by law enforcement, and in January and February 2021, directly after Emotet was taken down.
- An inverse correlation between the stringency of Covid-19 lockdowns and the volumes of downloader and ransomware activity: the more stringent the lockdowns, the less activity, running contrary to the prevailing narrative that attacks increase when users work from home, though attacks against remote workers are a source of concern.
- Large organisations see more than double the amount of confirmed malware incidents than medium-sized businesses.
“Attacks like Solorigate show that even trusted software from reliable vendors can turn into a trojan horse for cunning attackers. Technology alone cannot be the solution to this problem. As our data shows, we have seen a 13 per cent increase in the number of incidents in just one year, and these incidents keep increasing year on year,” said Hugues Foulon, CEO of Orange Cyberdefense.
“A large proportion of the tech-driven security alerts that our analysts deal with are just noise but this puts a tremendous strain on already stretched IT and security teams. Indeed, not all businesses have the means or resources to employ managed security services providers to help them sift through the ‘noise’ and find the actionable security ‘signals’. We thus believe that security technologies can, and must, do better,” added Foulon.
