Ransomware most prevalent malicious software
Ransomware is the most prevalent variety of malicious software and attacks doubled since 2017, according to Verizon’s 2018 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR).
Ransomware was found in 39 percent of malware-related data breaches – double that of last year’s DBIR – and accounts for over 700 incidents. Attacks are now moving into business-critical systems, which encrypt file servers or databases, inflicting more damage and commanding bigger ransom requests, the analysis shows.
The DBIR report also flags a shift in how social attacks, such as financial pretexting and phishing, are used. Increasingly human resource (HR) departments are being targeted in a bid to extract employee wage and tax data, so criminals can commit tax fraud and divert tax rebates.
The human factor continues to be a key weakness of organisations, according to the report. Financial pretexting and phishing represent 98 percent of social incidents and 93 percent of all breaches investigated – with email continuing to be the main entry point (96 percent of cases). Companies are nearly three times more likely to get breached by social attacks than via actual vulnerabilities.
In addition, distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks can impact anyone and are often used as camouflage, often being started, stopped and restarted to hide other breaches in progress, the analysis states.
Join us at Intelligent Automation in Insurance - April 26th 2018, London: Book now.
More of today's news
European reinsurers avoid Berkshire retroactive reinsurance competition
Sompo merges international retail operations under new platform
LMG appoints Horton as new chair
Protection gap in cyber, health more acute than in nat cat
Beecher Carlson names new CEO, COO
Global disasters caused record $144bn insured losses in 2017
IUA CEO: Poor quality business weighs on re-Takaful market
Lloyd’s broker AFL taps chief commercial officer from JLT
Gallagher makes acquisition for transportation brokerage expansion
