Ransomware, Cyberespionage On The Rise Finds Verizon

Ransomware incidents have risen 50 percent over the last year according to Verizon, who just recently released the 2017 edition of their Data Breach Investigations Report detailing the latest trends and information on cybersecurity threats.

Here are some of the key data points.

Based on data from 65 organizations, 42,068 incidents and 1,935 breaches in 84 countries across the globe, Verizon has made some startling, but unfortunately not all too surprising, finds.

For instance, the above statistic on the rise in ransomware lends further credence to Symantec’s recent findings.

Likewise, Verizon found the top three industries for data breaches are financial services with 24 percent of the total, health care at 15 percent and the public sector at 12 percent. Retail and accommodation combined to account for 15 percent of breaches.

More surprising, perhaps, are the insights that 68 percent of security threats in the healthcare industry are internal. Cross-industry data on breaches indicates the average involvement of internal actors to be around 25 percent.

Another development of note in the Verizon data indicates that educational institutions are increasingly hit by instances of cyberespionage — present in 26 percent of breaches, up from 5 percent last year.

Cyberespionage as also found to be the most common type of attack across manufacturing and the public sector.

The study suggests the reason for this is that the myriad of research conducted at universities puts them in the sights of state-affiliated groups.

The financial and insurance industries saw nearly 1,000 combined data breaches, though in 96 percent of cases in these industries the threat actors were external. DDOS, web application attacks and payment card skimming were the top three security incidents, in the financial industry, comprising 88 percent of the whole.

“Not only does the financial industry need to protect data that is easy to monetize,” Verizon wrote in the report, “but investment banks and other non-commercial entities have information surrounding investment strategies, mergers and acquisitions and market influencers that would be sought after by actors motivated by espionage.”

Some 73 percent of the breaches across industries analyzed by Verizon were found to be financially motivated.