Threat Intelligence Exposes The Extent of Cyber Attacks

Uploaded on 2024-03-13 in TECHNOLOGY--Resilience, NEWS-Cybersecurity News, FREE TO VIEW

Last year proved to be a year of volatile, adaptive and creative digital threats, as threat actors continue to be relentless in their assault, leaving organisations looking for another layer of defence.

The new 2024 Annual Cyber Threat Report from SonicWall exposes all types of cyber behaviours and trends from digital adversaries to help partners build data-driven solutions to keep customers safe. In particular, organisations are increasingly turning to Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to alleviate the pressure on IT departments.

Managed services have emerged as a game-changing solution, providing organisations with an additional human-layer of defence, addressing alert fatigue, and freeing up valuable resources and time for core business functions.“The SonicWall 2024 Threat Report reveals that the threat landscape continues to grow in complexity and depth as threat actors adopt new tactics and platforms,” said SonicWall President and CEO Bob VanKirk.

“It has become clear that conventional network security isn’t enough. Security professionals need assistance to cope with the overwhelming volume of cyberattacks and protect from the endpoint to the cloud... “Especially as the cloud becomes an indispensable reality for businesses, the role of MSPs is shifting from technical maintenance to raising the bar on their customers security posture.” VanKirk said.

Overall attack numbers climbed (+20%) totalling more than 1 billion attempts compared to the same time as last year. Global cryptojacking volume rose 659% and encrypted threat jumped 117%, as threat actors opted for a stealthier, less risky means of malicious activities.

The data illustrates the tenacious and evolving state of cyber threats, underscoring the need for businesses to continually adapt their security strategies, and serves as a call for organisations to lean on MSPs to help identify and remediate threats quickly.

The Ransomware Surge Continues

While ransomware continues to be a threat, SonicWall's threat researchers expect a broader set of actions in 2024, specifically targeting SMEs, governments and the enterprise. Their 2024 Threat Report provides insight on a range of threats, including:

Malware – Total global malware volume rose 11% in 2023, with Latin America and the U.S. logging the biggest jumps – (+30%) and (+15%) respectively. Surprisingly, Europe saw a (-2%) decrease, with the UK seeing the steepest decline of -28%.

Ransomware – Overall ransomware numbers saw a -36% decline annually, the summer months and second half of the year suggests a strong rebound, as it spiked +37% during the summer months when compared to the same time last year.

IoT Exploit – Global volume rose 15%, as connected devices continue to rapidly multiply, bad actors are targeting weak points of entry as potential attack vectors into organisations.

Encrypted Threats – Yet another quieter approach embraced by bad actors in the last year was encrypted threats, which spiked (+117%) globally.

Evolved, Diversified Attack Vectors

Cyber criminals and nation states are adapting their abilities to gain access to critical infrastructure, making the threat landscape even more complex and forcing organisations to reconsider their security needs.

The second half of the 2023 saw a barrage of ransomware activity (+27%) and a variety of other attacks have trended up globally annually, including IoT exploit (+15%), intrusion attempts (+20%) and encrypted threats (+117%).

New threats are emerging every day, and MSPs use these threat insights to build an actual plan with the necessary capabilities to keep customers safe.

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