The 2020 Sonic Wall Cyber Threat Report suggests that the year 2019 witnessed over 9.9 billion malware attacks on the IT infrastructure causing damage to systems, hardware, daily operations and brand reputations of several multi-national companies.
Among them, researchers found over 440,000 newly discovered malware variant attacks out of which over 153,000 were developed last year- as per the knowledge of security analysts.
Sonic Wall mentioned in its report that the approach of Cyber Criminals in spreading malware has changed in recent times as they are proficiently targeting weaker victims.
While the number of ransomware attacks dipped by 9% last year, still the targeted attacks left many state and local governments paralyzed as they had to see disruptions in email communications, websites, telephone lines, and dispatch services.
Security analysts from Sonic Wall have discovered that the Internet of Things(IoT) is acting as a treasure trove to cybercriminals as bad actors are making great money by hacking smart TVs, e-scooters and smart speakers apart from the regular set of gadgets such as refrigerators, doorbells and CCTV cameras.
As the cryptocurrency market witnessed a slowdown in the second half of last year, there was a decline witnessed in the volume of crypto-jacking hits says study.
In another report compiled and released by Kaspersky, over 4.1 billion medical records were stolen last year by hackers and the stolen data includes info such as names, addresses, social security numbers, date of births, email IDs and contact numbers.
American Medical Collection Agency says that it is becoming increasingly difficult to manage such data breaches, even if multiple parties are involved. The AMCA also claims that hackers are seen targeting healthcare organizations with cyberattacks related to customized file-encrypting malware where hackers are seen stealing data at first and then encrypting the entire database until a ransom is paid. And if in case the target fails to pay a ransom, they are seen selling the data on dark web forums where the demand for such information is immense.
Hope, the data watchdogs come up with some stringent measures to help curb such data breaches in a scientific way..!
