According to IBM’s X-Force Threat Intelligence Index 2020, more than 8.5 billion records were leaked in cyber attacks in 2019. And out of them over 7 billion records were accessed by hackers due to misconfigured cloud servers and human errors.
IBM’s report also highlights the fact that hacking techniques have evolved in the past few years- all due to the decades of experience they had in breaching 10s of billions of corporate and personal records along with 1000s of software flaws.
Researchers from the world-renowned technology company have found that 60 percent of network breaches occurred because the cyber crooks made credentials from already stolen records or software vulnerabilities. That means the hackers had to use lesser deception techniques to achieve access to records.
And as usual, the business sectors which are vulnerable to cyber-attacks are retail, manufacturing, healthcare, and government. So, IBM is advising all business heads to be proactive when it comes to taking preventive measures in bolstering Cybersecurity.
Highlighting the fact that phishing was becoming an increasingly favorite attack vector to compromise information for hackers, IBM’s threat report has also found that older known vulnerabilities like Microsoft Office plus Windows Server Message Blocks were still being used to exploit at a higher rate by cybercriminals in 2019.
What’s amazing in the find is the fact that many large companies like Microsoft, Google, YouTube domains were ranking high in most spoofed brands by hackers to steal monetizable information.
