Cyber-Attacks Cost Global Firms $45bn in 2018

Cyber-criminals are getting better at monetizing their attacks, with $45bn lost last year alone in two million incidents, according to Internet Society’s Online Trust Alliance (OTA).

The group’s new Cyber Incident & Breach Trends Report comprises information from the FBI, Risk Based Security, the Identity Theft Resource Center and other sources.

It paints the picture of a rapidly maturing cybercrime economy in which both tried-and-tested and emerging techniques are being used in highly effective ways to generate illicit profits for the black hats.

One example of this is ransomware: although overall infections declined 20% from 2017 figures, losses spiked by 60% as attackers focused on higher value business targets.

As reported by the FBI, Business Email Compromise (BEC) has also become a major money-maker for cyber-criminals, netting them $1.3bn in 2018 – double the figure of a previous year.

The report also warned of a 78% increase in digital supply chain attacks of the sort seen with groups using Magecart code to infect e-commerce sites. It claimed that two-thirds of organizations have suffered an attack costing on average $1.1 million, and estimated that half of all cyber-attacks last year involved the supply chain.

Credential stuffing attacks were also highlighted as an urgent threat to address, given figures claiming there were 30bn malicious log-in attempts last year.

On the plus side, there was a 3.2% decrease in reported data breaches last year, and the number of exposed records also dropped in 2018 from the previous year.

Still, the Internet Society claimed that 95% of breaches are preventable. It urged all organizations to put in place a ..

Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.