eSentire: Education Vertical Spirals in Cybersecurity Threat Rankings

… years of making big investments in security, having security requirements put in place, and implementing better controls.

“The financial industry is still highly targeted, but they’ve done a lot over the years to increase their security posture,” he said.

Phishing attacks continued in 2018, with DocuSign dominating phishing lures in the corporate environment, followed by Office 365 and OneDrive. Malware, which typically enters organizations through an email link or malicious attachment, was most prevalent in the mining industry, which saw the largest volume and diversity of malware. Mining was followed by education, health care, construction and real estate.

As a note of interest, Tuesday proves to be the most popular day of the week for phishing attempts.

Both phishing attacks and malware are preventable with the implementation of more technical controls and employee awareness, the report notes.

The latest eSentire threat report also took a look at attacks on IoT devices, bruteforce attacks, and exploitation campaigns. For example, new exploits for multiple IoT devices include door controllers, security cameras and digital video recorders.

“This issue will only continue to grow as IoT forms the foundation of connected devices and smart-city grids,” the report states.