Global Cyber Threats Surge to All-time Highs
Companies are moving faster when it comes to addressing cyber threats, but this may not be enough to keep up with the daily onslaught of attacks.
Securonix recently released its 2022 Threat Report results, highlighting a significant rise (up 485%) in advanced cyber threats that the company has identified and scanned.
The report found that a combination of persistent insider threats, cloud infrastructure misuse and abuse, and sophisticated advanced attacks has fostered a riskier environment for companies.
As corporate networks extend to the cloud in support of a distributed workforce, threat actors take advantage of the security gaps presented by this expanded attack surface. Securonix research revealed indicators of compromise (IOCs) are up 380% year-over-year, and the number of threats detected, analyzed, and reported have increased by 218% during that time.
It also revealed that new vulnerabilities are being identified at nearly double the pace of 2021. In response to the rise in the number of observed global threats, Securonix Autonomous Threat Sweeper (ATS) distributed 482% more threat awareness notifications to subscribers than it did a year ago.
“We’ve noticed a substantial increase in the number of threats since the beginning of the year, and the four areas that have been persistently active over the past 12 months are insider threats, cloud infrastructure, ransomware attacks, and IoT / OT attacks,” explained Kayzad Vanskuiwalla, director of cyber threat hunting and intelligence at Securonix.
According to the 2022 Threat Report, increased reliance on cloud infrastructure has led to insiders modernizing their approach to data exfiltration. Securonix research found that amid the growing use of cloud storage and sharing platforms, email (68%) and content management products (68%) are the top egress vectors.
As enterprises seek to balance the benefits of cloud computing against its risks, cloud infrastructure misuse and abuse continue to be high-profile concern. The report found that users remain the primary cause of potential risk to cloud infrastructure, with challenges ranging from unintended platform modifications to inconsistent assigned privileges.
“The rise in global threats presents an increasingly challenging landscape for the enterprise and the public,” said Sina Chehreghani, manager of threat hunting & incident response at Securonix.
“The evidence in our research strongly indicates that companies need to review anomalous user behavior and detection coverage to effectively respond to insider threats and the increasing risks presented by cloud infrastructure adoption. Furthermore, leveraging preemptive detection strategies can stop attackers earlier in the kill chain in ransomware attacks while combining the key data sources to look for unusual behavior provides more robust threat detection and response in IoT and OT environments,” Chehreghani added.
Image credit: iStockphoto/razihusin
