Almost 50 percent more cyber attacks in corona year

New “The Year of Social Distancing” global report by Mimecast describes how attack volume surged by 48% during the first year of the pandemic, with sudden increases in volume corresponding to spikes in COVID-19 infection rates in April and October 2020.

Drawing on data from the Mimecast threat intelligence team, the report details how threat actors targeted remote workers during the first year of the pandemic, March 2020 – February 2021.

The report describes how attack volume surged by 48% during the first year of the pandemic, with sudden increases in volume corresponding to spikes in COVID-19 infection rates in April and October 2020.

“Threat actors took advantage of the pandemic to launch a torrent of COVID-19-themed social engineering attacks, understanding that people were under stress working in the home environment, and thus more likely to be deceived and make mistakes,” said Josh Douglas, vice president, product management at Mimecast. “The second part of that strategy was to ‘flood the zone’ in security operations centers. They knew analysts would also be stressed and stretched thin, so overwhelming them with a high volume of threats would increase the likelihood of their attacks slipping through defenses.”

The report also examines the cyber habits of at-home workers, which revealed some alarming facts, including:

• A 3x rise in unsafe clicks in March 2020, right when the work-from-home trend began.• A 60% increase in the use of company-issued computers for personal business.

Even though vaccine rollouts have begun and organizations may soon start making plans for people to return to offices in the months ahead, the Mimecast threat intelligence team has assessed the likelihood of threat actors continuing to exploit the unsettled work situation as very likely (³95%). These exploitation efforts will likely focus both on remote workers and those returning to the office – which c ..

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