A Sneak Peek at the 2022 BrightCloud Threat Report

Cyber threats are becoming increasingly difficult to detect. Cybercriminals are also becoming experts in deception. What does this mean for your business? How can you keep your family members safe online and reassure your customers you are protecting their data?

Our threat research analysts have complied the latest threat intelligence data to bring you the most cutting-edge and insightful information about the most recent cyber threats and what they mean for you.

Below is a summary and sneak peek from the full report. http://channelpartners.com/

Malware Infections Are Not Equal

Whether you operate a business or spend time online surfing the web, malware remains a concern. In the last year, 86% of malware remained unique to a PC, which has been consistent for the past few years. This implies attackers are obtaining a level of consistency in what they do to avoid being caught.

While the goal of spreading infection is top of mind for a bad actor, infection rates are not equal. When we compared the trends between businesses and consumers, there are some marked differences:

• 53% of consumer PCs were infected more than once, but businesses lag in migrating from Windows 7, leaving them more suspectable to infection.
• For medium-sized organizations (21 to 100 licensed PCs) infection rates are just over one-third (34%), infecting nine PCs on average.
• The manufacturing, public administration and information sectors experienced higher-than-average infection rates.

If your business falls within these industries or if you’re concerned your personal PC could be prone to infection, read the complete section on malware in the 2022 BrightCloud Threat Report. It’s chock full of insights into the differences in infection rates by type of PC, region and industry.

Skyrocketing Ransomware Payments Will Cost More Than Just Revenue

If you’re a small-business owner, you don’t need to be told that you’ve suffered immensely throughout the pandemic. Exposure to ransomware is just another element you’ve had to consider. Ransomware continues to plague small to midsize businesses (SMBs). While this is not a new revelation, the smallest organizations, those with 100 employees or less, accounted for 44% of ransomware victims last year.

That’s nearly half.

Why do cybercriminals focus on SMBs? Attacks on larger enterprises and state-owned entities bring a level of publicity and attention that makes it harder for bad actors to achieve their goal of a financial payout. SMBs have fewer resources with which to respond and are thus more likely to pay–and pay a lot. The year-end average for 2021 more than doubled the 2020 average, reaching $322,168. With limited resources at their disposal, the smallest of organizations are faced with tough decisions ahead when it comes to making ransomware payments and disclosing their decision to do so.

Law enforcement agencies are starting to gain headway with ransomware gangs. To learn how countries are banding together to shut down notorious groups like REvil and DarkSide, check out the ransomware section of the full report.

High-Risk URLs Are Phishing for Your Data in the Most Benign of Locations

We discovered four million new high-risk URLs were in existence in 2021. To make matters worse, almost 66% of them involved phishing. Cybercriminals look to certain times of the year to execute their attacks.They are also keen to impersonate well-known brands to lure you into clicking on malicious links. Our complete list of top brands that are most impersonated is available in the phishing section of our full report.

Cyber Threats Can Be Thwarted through Cyber Resilience

“Businesses’ ability to prepare for and recover from threats will increase as they integrate cyber resilience into their technologies, processes, and people,” said Mark J. Barrenechea, OpenText CEO & CTO. “With security risks escalating worldwide and a persistent state of ‘unprecedented’ threats, compromises are inevitable. This year’s findings reiterate the need for organizations to deploy strong multi-layered security defenses to help them remain at the heart of cyber resilience and circumvent even the most creative cybercriminals.”

Our full report helps you uncover the latest cyber trends powered by our BrightCloud Threat Intelligence platform. To learn more and empower your cyber know-how, download the 2022 BrightCloud Threat Report.

Grayson Milbourne is the Security Intelligence Director at Webroot, where he has worked for the past 14 years. In his current role, Grayson works to support the Product Management team to ensure Webroot products are effective against today’s most advanced threats.

This guest blog is part of a Channel Futures sponsorship.