In letter : Cyber attacks on corporate networks increased by 50% in 2021 from the previous year and reached a record high of around 925 attacks per week per organization, globally, last month at the height of fear of Log4J.
The Log4J zero-day vulnerability surfaced in early December and quickly turned into a major issue. Amit Yoran, director of cybersecurity firm Tenable, describe it is the largest and most critical vulnerability of the past decade – and possibly the largest in the history of modern computing.
Check Point Research in its latest report said the education and research sectors experienced the highest volume of attacks in 2021 with an average of 1,605 attacks per organization each week. The military and government sector also saw a slight increase in attacks, averaging 1,079 attacks per week, resulting in a 47% year-over-year increase.
In fact, all industries tracked by Check Point saw a significant increase in attacks last year.
Geographically, Africa has been hit hardest by cyber attacks, followed by APAC, Latin America, Europe and North America (in that order). The increase in the frequency of attacks year over year ranged from 13%, low in Africa, to a whopping 68% increase in Europe.
Check Point has said too often that organizations are under attack after failing to apply a patch for a known vulnerability.
The security company recommends segmenting networks and putting strong firewalls and ISP protections between them to prevent infections from spreading throughout the network. It’s also a good idea to educate employees to recognize telltale signs of potential threats and train them to report unusual findings immediately to security teams.
Image credit: Tima miroshnichenko
