Verizon picks industries that are prime targets for cyber espionage | SC Media

Verizon picks industries that are prime targets for cyber espionage | SC Media

Verizon’s new Cyber-Espionage Report (CER) found the top targets for cyber espionage to be public sector (31 percent), manufacturing (22 percent) and the professional industries (11 percent).


The CER draws from seven years (2014-2020) of Verizon’s Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) content as well as more than 14 years of Verizon Threat Research Advisory Center (VTRAC) cyber-espionage data breach response expertise.


Verizon says the threat actors conducting cyber espionage can range from nation states to business competitors and in some cases, organized crime groups. Their main targets are governments and private sector corporations and their primary motivations are national security, political positioning and economic competitive advantage. They tend to go after state secrets, intellectual property and sensitive information.


In accomplishing their goals, cyber-espionage attackers leverage three primary actions:


Social engineering by targeting employees through activities such as phishing.
Hacking systems and networks by using backdoors and command and control functions to establish and maintain access.
Deploying malicious software, such as trojan downloaders, to extend their capabilities.

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