Since the onset of the current health crisis, many systems have found themselves strained. From remote work platforms to collaboration software, most services have been affected by the heavy traffic and the necessity to accommodate large numbers of users.
The security landscape, as well as the fast-growing market behind it, can be highly unpredictable. From adaptable threats to surges in demand, there are countless ways your company can be caught off guard. And never was this trend more visible than in the past year, when the increase in remote work prompted an avalanche of cyber threats.
While economies were slowed down by the recent health crisis, the same cannot be said about cyber crime. Threat actors used this period as a proving ground, a time to test and perfect their tools. As the ‘’digital continuum’’ became a reality, cyber attacks diversified and exploited new ways of compromising systems.
If the countless cyber attacks from the past months have made anything clear, it’s that threat actors move fast. Extremely fast. Worse yet, even if their targets and goals differ, cyber criminals collaborate. Much like the security world, which pools resources to highlight new threats, the cyber crime world connives to makes those threats more elusive.
From darkweb networks to state-sponsored groups, cybercrime has long outgrown its traditional image. Now, the myth of the lone wolf who carries out complex operations alone has all but disappeared.
While the media have extensively covered the recent spike in malware, a certain aspect seems to have been downplayed. The truth is, not only have cyber-attacks grown significantly during the pandemic (in March alone, 832 million records were breached through malware), but their complexity has also visibly increased as well.
While public safety measures have started to relax, the surge of malware accompanying the pandemic is still making headlines. As a recent study points out, hackers have created no less than 130 000 new e-mail domains related to Covid-19 to carry out what analysts now call ”fearware” attacks.
From small companies losing their income to fraud to entire countries being robbed of their data, the past few years have seen an unprecedented surge in security incidents. In fact, the recently launched Allianz Risk Barometer 2020 claims cyber incidents have surpassed even business interruption to become the No. 1 business risk for companies everywhere.
Prevent alert fatigue with actionable threat intelligence
Suspicious. Suspicious. Suspicious. You scroll down as you sift through your thousandth false positive today. And it’s not even noon. You take a small break, after one last glance at the screen. After all, no real threat has been detected in months. What could go wrong?
In the world of cybercrime, like in the physical world, the thief is often caught only after he makes off with the loot. With the advent of massive malware networks and ransomware groups, both internal teams and security providers often find themselves overwhelmed by the number and diversity of attacks. No single unit can detect all relevant threats and stop them before they damage valuable data or infrastructure.
Cyber-attacks and threat actors have become more numerous and more sophisticated, creating new threats that lurk unseen, ready to wreak havoc on Security Operations Centers. The stakes are high: cybercrime costs climbed 12% last year to $13 million per company.
