Weekly cyberattacks jumped by 50% in 2021, with a peak in December due largely to the Log4J exploit

Image: seksan Mongkhonkhamsao/Moment/Getty Images

Cybercriminals enjoyed a banner twelvemonth successful 2021; bully quality for them but atrocious quality for their victims. For 2021 arsenic a whole, the number of cyberattacks against firm networks soared by 50% from the erstwhile year, cyber menace quality supplier Check Point Research said successful a study released connected Monday.

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The twelvemonth ended with an particularly unsmooth 4th fourth that saw an all-time highest successful play cyberattacks astatine 925 per organization. This capper was owed successful ample portion to the Log4J vulnerability, according to Check Point. Since becoming nationalist cognition successful December, the flaw successful Apache's Log4j inferior has prompted hackers to scan for unpatched systems connected which they tin remotely tally malicious codification and instrumentality power of affected computers.

Image: Check Point Research

For 2021, the education/research assemblage was deed by the top fig of cyberattacks, averaging 1,605 per enactment each week, a 75% summation from 2020. The government/military assemblage was next, with 1,136 attacks per week, a summation of 57% from the erstwhile year. In 3rd was the communications manufacture with 1,079 attacks per enactment each week, a 51% increase.

Across the world, Africa bore the brunt of the highest fig of attacks past year, with an mean of 1,582 per week per organization. APAC (Asia-Pacific) was second, averaging 1,353 play attacks per organization, followed by Latin America with 1,118 attacks weekly, Europe with 670 attacks weekly, and North America with an mean of 503 play attacks per organization.

"Hackers support innovating," said Check Point Software information probe manager Omer Dembinsky. "New penetration techniques and evasion methods person made it overmuch easier for hackers to execute malicious intentions. What's astir alarming is that we're seeing immoderate pivotal societal industries surge into the most-attacked list. Education, authorities and healthcare industries made it into the apical 5 astir attacked industries list, worldwide. I expect these numbers to summation going into 2022, arsenic hackers volition proceed to innovate and find caller methods to execute cyberattacks, particularly ransomware."

To support your enactment from cyberattack, Check Point offers the pursuing tips:

1. Patch. Attackers often penetrate networks by exploiting known information vulnerabilities for which a spot is disposable but has not been applied. Ensure that the latest captious information patches are installed connected each systems and software.
2. Segment. Segment your networks and use beardown firewall and intrusion prevention safeguards betwixt those segments to forestall malware from navigating crossed your full network.
3. Educate employees. Awareness by users tin assistance forestall an onslaught earlier it hits. Educate your users truthful they cognize however to study thing suspicious and perchance malicious to your assistance table oregon IT people.
4. Implement precocious information protection. No 1 exertion tin support your enactment from each benignant of threat. Instead, see a scope of cardinal technologies, specified arsenic machine learning, sandboxing, anomaly detection and contented disarmament. Two cardinal factors that tin beryllium effectual are menace extraction (file sanitization) and menace emulation (advanced sandboxing). Individually, these connection beardown protection. Together, they supply a broad mode to combat chartless malware some astatine the web level and connected endpoint devices.

"We're successful a cyber pandemic, if you will," Dembinsky said. "I powerfully impulse the public, particularly those successful the education, authorities and healthcare sectors, to larn the basics connected however to support themselves. Simple measures specified arsenic patching, segmenting your networks and educating employees tin spell a agelong mode successful making the satellite safer."

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