2023 could be the biggest year ever for cybercriminals
New figures have stated that 2023 is most likely the biggest year ever for cybercrime.
According to the latest SonicWall figures, cybercrime is on the rise across the board, but trends are slowly changing, which is something IT security teams need to keep in mind. More precisely, hackers are choosing a “slow and slow” approach, keeping secrets while trying to achieve financially motivated goals.
That being said, the company found that the total malware (opens in a new tab) volume has grown by 2% in 2022, after three consecutive years of declines.
Ransomware increases in number
Overall, the entire continent of Europe has seen an increase in malware levels (10%+), of which Ukraine suffered a record 25.6 million attempts. Some countries, such as the UK (-13%) and Germany (-28%) performed quite well last year. Overall, the US has 9% lower malware volumes than it did in 2021.
Ransomwarearguably one of the most popular attack vectors out there, has seen a global drop of 21%, but the total volume has surpassed that of 2017, 2018, 2019 and 202. In particular, the total number of ransomware in Q4 (154.9 million) was the highest since Q3 2021.
But the trends seem to be shifting to IoT malware, whose global volume is up 87% by 2022, reaching a total of 112 million hits last year. Cryptojacking – hijacking an endpoint for cryptocurrency mining – also shows no signs of abating. It grew 43% globally last year, which is the most threat that SonicWall researchers have recorded in a year. The retail and financial sectors were hit the hardest, with increases of 2810% and 352% respectively.
“The past year has reinforced the need for cybersecurity across every industry and every aspect of business, as threat actors target everything,” said Bob VanKirk, President and CEO of SonicWall. and everything from education to retail to finance.” “While organizations face more and more real-world obstacles with ongoing macroeconomic pressures and geopolitical conflicts, threat actors are changing attack strategies at a rapid pace. alarming.”