{"id":13247,"date":"2021-03-17T03:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-17T03:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eodishasamachar.com\/en\/2021\/03\/17\/new-sonicwall-2020-research-shows-cyber-arms-race-at-tipping-point\/"},"modified":"2021-03-17T03:00:00","modified_gmt":"2021-03-17T03:00:00","slug":"new-sonicwall-2020-research-shows-cyber-arms-race-at-tipping-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eodishasamachar.com\/en\/2021\/03\/17\/new-sonicwall-2020-research-shows-cyber-arms-race-at-tipping-point\/","title":{"rendered":"New SonicWall 2020 Research Shows Cyber Arms Race at Tipping Point"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> \n<\/p>\n<div id=\"\">\n                            <!--<a class=\"format-txt\" href=\"{baseURL}\/View\/{release.id}?_download=1\">View this article in .txt format<\/a>--><\/p>\n<p class=\"subheadline\">\n                               Threat actors weaponizing cloud storage, advanced cloud-based tools to create record ransomware attack effectiveness, volume                            <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><i>Ransomware soars with 62% increase since 2019<\/i><\/li>\n<li><i style=\"font-size: 1rem\">Office files preferred by cybercriminals, surpass<br \/>\nPDFs, roughly 1 in 4 malicious<\/i><\/li>\n<li><i style=\"font-size: 1rem\">Never-before-seen&#8217; malware variants up 74%<br \/>\nyear-over-year<\/i><\/li>\n<li><i>Cryptojacking shows three-year high with 28% year-over-year<br \/>\nincrease<\/i><\/li>\n<li><i style=\"font-size: 1rem\">IoT malware rises 66% as criminals continue to<br \/>\nleverage COVID-19 pandemic<\/i><\/li>\n<li><i style=\"font-size: 1rem\">Retail, healthcare and government face mounting<br \/>\nransomware volume<\/i><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><i><br \/><\/i>SINGAPORE &#8211;\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.media-outreach.com\/\">Media OutReach<\/a>\u00a0&#8211; 17 March 2021 &#8211;\u00a0The pandemic&#8217;s<br \/>\nwork-from-home reality resulted in an unprecedented change for organisations as<br \/>\nthey fought to defend exponentially greater attack surfaces from cybercriminals<br \/>\narmed with powerful cloud-based tools, cloud storage and endless targets. As<br \/>\nworking environments evolved, so did the methods of threat actors and other motivated<br \/>\nperpetrators, as detailed in the latest 2021 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;2020 offered a perfect storm for cybercriminals and a critical tipping point<br \/>\nfor the cyber arms race,&#8221; said SonicWall President and CEO Bill Conner. &#8220;The<br \/>\npandemic \u2014 along with remote work, a charged political climate, record prices<br \/>\nof cryptocurrency, and threat actors weaponizing cloud storage and tools \u2014<br \/>\ndrove the effectiveness and volume of cyberattacks to new highs. This latest<br \/>\nthreat intelligence offers a look at how cybercriminals shifted and refined<br \/>\ntheir tactics, painting a picture of what they are doing amid the uncertain future<br \/>\nthat lies ahead.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The 2021 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report highlights how COVID-19 provided threat<br \/>\nactors with ample opportunity for more powerful, aggressive and numerous<br \/>\nattacks, thriving on the fear and uncertainty of remote and mobile workforces navigating<br \/>\ncorporate networks from home.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 1rem\">&#8220;There is no code of conduct when it comes to cybercriminals,<br \/>\ntheir methods of attacks and the selection of their targets,&#8221; said Conner.<br \/>\n&#8220;Technology is moving at an unprecedented rate. Threats that were once thought<br \/>\nto be two or three years away are now a reality, with do-it-yourself, cloud-based<br \/>\ntools creating an army of cybercriminals armed with the same devastating force<br \/>\nand impact of a nation-state or larger criminal enterprise. Organisations must<br \/>\nremain vigilant and proactive in hardening their cybersecurity posture.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 1rem\">Debasish Mukherjee, Vice President,<br \/>\nRegional Sales adds &#8220;As more organisations are adopting to digital<br \/>\ntransformation, it is imperative to have strategies in place to plan<br \/>\nmitigation, build resilience and respond to anomalies.\u00a0With the increase<br \/>\nin data breach and leaked information, organisations are now more susceptible<br \/>\nto threats and need to be more prepared than ever in combating cyber attacks.&#8221;<br \/>\nHe continues &#8220;The findings in the 2021 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report reveals<br \/>\ngreat insights into the latest threats, including those in Asia Pacific and how<br \/>\norganisations can better prepare for security optimisation.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 1rem\">The 2021 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report goes inside the stories<br \/>\nthat headlined 2020, and takes a closer look at new and disruptive cyber<br \/>\nthreats to provide insight into the evolving cyber threat landscape. Major<br \/>\nfindings of the new in-depth SonicWall report include:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Ransomware<br \/>\nreaches new heights with increasingly targeted attacks:<\/b> A 62% increase in ransomware globally, and 158%<br \/>\nspike in North America, points to cybercriminals using more sophisticated<br \/>\ntactics and more dangerous variants, like Ryuk, to earn an easy payday.<\/li>\n<li><b style=\"font-size: 1rem\">Ryuk<br \/>\nransomware rises from obscurity, sees astronomical increase: <\/b><span style=\"font-size: 1rem\">First identified in August 2018, Ryuk did not<br \/>\nappear outside of North America, Europe or Asia as late as January 2020. The<br \/>\nfollowing month, Ryuk began climbing the charts, eventually overtaking<br \/>\ntop-ranking Cerber ransomware. With 109.9 million cases detected worldwide, Ryuk<br \/>\nwas logged nearly every eight seconds in September alone.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><b style=\"font-size: 1rem\">More<br \/>\n&#8216;never-before-seen&#8217; malware variants identified:<\/b><span style=\"font-size: 1rem\"> SonicWall&#8217;s newly patented Real-Time Deep Memory<br \/>\nInspection\u2122 (RTDMI), a component of the company&#8217;s Capture Advanced Threat<br \/>\nProtection (ATP) sandbox service, discovered 268,362 &#8216;never-before-seen&#8217;<br \/>\nmalware variants in 2020, a 74% year-over-year increase. RTDMI\u2122 is proven to<br \/>\nproactively detect and block unknown mass-market malware, including malicious<br \/>\nOffice, and PDF file types.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><b style=\"font-size: 1rem\">Malicious Office<br \/>\nfiles surpass last year&#8217;s preferred PDFs: <\/b><span style=\"font-size: 1rem\">SonicWall research shows the shift to employees working from home<br \/>\nfull-time could be directly linked to the increased utilization of Office files<br \/>\nand PDFs as malicious vehicles armed with phishing URLs, embedded malicious<br \/>\nfiles and other dangerous exploits.<b> <\/b>New SonicWall data indicates a 67%<br \/>\nincrease in malicious Office files in 2020, while malicious PDFs dropped 22%.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><b style=\"font-size: 1rem\">Cryptojacking<br \/>\nreturns as cryptocurrency breaks records: <\/b><span style=\"font-size: 1rem\">Once thought to be a dying attack vector after the industry&#8217;s major<br \/>\nmining operation boarded its online service, cryptojacking is back thanks to<br \/>\nrising cryptocurrency values and its appeal of concealed payouts. Total<br \/>\ncryptojacking for 2020 set records with 81.9 million hits, a 28% increase from<br \/>\nlast year&#8217;s 64.1 million total.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><b style=\"font-size: 1rem\">IoT malware increases<br \/>\nas pandemic creates potential network of disruption:<\/b><span style=\"font-size: 1rem\"> In March 2020, masses of employees packed their personal<br \/>\noffice belongings and equipment to work from home for months on end,<br \/>\nsimultaneously creating an explosion of new attack vectors. In 2020, SonicWall<br \/>\nCapture Labs threat researchers recorded 56.9 million IoT malware attempts, a<br \/>\n66% increase that showed shifting tactics for lurking cybercriminals.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><b style=\"font-size: 1rem\">Intrusion<br \/>\nattempts up as attack patterns change: <\/b><span style=\"font-size: 1rem\">The<br \/>\ndistribution of intrusion attacks took on an entirely new character as a result<br \/>\nof the changes brought on by the pandemic. In 2020, Directory Traversal tactics<br \/>\n(34%) took over the top spot after a tie with remote code execution (21% for<br \/>\nboth) in 2019.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><b style=\"font-size: 1rem\">Retail,<br \/>\nhealthcare and government face mounting ransomware volume: <\/b><span style=\"font-size: 1rem\">Industry-specific ransomware data reflects the<br \/>\nimpact cybercriminals had on retail (365%), healthcare (123%) and government<br \/>\n(21%) sectors over the course of the pandemic.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The annual 2021 SonicWall<br \/>\nCyber Threat Report arms enterprises, small- and medium-sized business, government<br \/>\nagencies and other organisations with actionable threat intelligence collected by the SonicWall Capture Labs threat research team. In-house researchers<br \/>\nwork collectively with other industry experts, over 50 industry collaboration<br \/>\ngroups, research teams and freelance security researchers.<\/p>\n<p>Data for the report is<br \/>\ngathered from over 1.1 million sensors strategically placed in over 215<br \/>\ncountries and territories around the world as well as cross-vector, threat related<br \/>\ninformation shared among SonicWall security systems, including firewalls, email<br \/>\nsecurity devices, endpoint security solutions, honeypots, content filtering<br \/>\nsystems and the SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) multi-engine<br \/>\nsandbox.<\/p>\n<p>To download the complete 2021<br \/>\nSonicWall Cyber Threat Report, please visit <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sonicwall.com\/ThreatReport\">www.sonicwall.com\/ThreatReport<\/a>.<b> <\/b><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.media-outreach.com\/release.php\/View\/68994#Contact\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Threat actors weaponizing cloud storage, advanced cloud-based tools to create record ransomware attack effectiveness, volume Ransomware soars with 62% increase since 2019 Office files preferred by cybercriminals, surpass PDFs, roughly 1 in 4 malicious Never-before-seen&#8217; malware variants up 74% year-over-year Cryptojacking shows three-year high with 28% year-over-year increase IoT malware rises 66% as criminals continue &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eodishasamachar.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13247"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eodishasamachar.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eodishasamachar.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eodishasamachar.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eodishasamachar.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/eodishasamachar.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13247\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eodishasamachar.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eodishasamachar.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eodishasamachar.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}