A Mid-Year Report: Cyberattacks outpace last year, despite less media coverage

By Rich Kenney

Our vendor partners help us understand what’s happening in Delaware and beyond our region. SonicWALL, our firewall partner, publishes a set of findings based on data from thousands of their devices installed around the world. This week, we received the numbers for the mid-point of 2018. They are startling.

Even though the business press seems less interested in cybersecurity this year, we wanted to start sharing trends, numbers and the facts with you. Especially because this year’s numbers are even uglier than last year.

Let’s look at several of the most significant cybersecurity threats according to SonicWall (2018 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report, 2018, pp. 1-10):

  • MALWARE VOLUME SURGES IN 2018
    1. “After a down 2016, malware volume in 2017 reached 9.32 billion. It was a staggering jump. Unfortunately, 2018 is already outpacing last year’s record numbers. To date, SonicWall has recorded 5.99 billion malware attacks in 2018, which represents a 102 percent increase over the same six-month window in 2017.”
  • RANSOMWARE IS BACK, ATFER A DOWN YEAR IN 2017
    1. “All told, SonicWall recorded 181.5 million ransomware attacks year to date. This marks a 229 percent increase over this same time frame in 2017. During the first six months of 2018, SonicWall Capture Labs threat researchers identified and analyzed more than a dozen new ransomware variants, which leveraged a variety of clever tactics to help compromise targeted machines.”
  • ENCRYPTED ATTACKS ASCEND TO RECORD HIGHS
    1. “In 2017, sessions encrypted by SSL/TLS standards represented 68 percent of total traffic. Through six months of 2018, 69.7 percent of sessions are leveraging encryption. Logically, the use of encrypted cyberattacks also is increasing dramatically. SonicWall recorded 1.4 million encrypted attacks globally in 2018, a 275 percent year-to-date increase over 2017.”
  • CYRPTOJACKING IS NEWEST THREAT
    1. “This is the act of compromising a network of random machines — typically by commandeering websites to deliver malware exploits — and then using the compute power of that botnet to illegally “mine” for cryptocurrency. In most cases, Coinhive is used as cryptojacking malware that spreads via compromised websites and steals processing power of victims’ devices (e.g., laptop, desktop, smartphone). Since January 2018, SonicWall has recorded more than 5.6 million hits of Coinhive in use. In one case, there were more than 336,000 Coinhive attempts in a single day.”

This is not the story we are hearing in the media now. It would seem the topic of cybersecurity is not exciting anymore. However, we know just how important it is for our clients.

TechSolutions monitors these trends and adjusts our suite of technology to defend your network and we try to keep you informed. We don’t intend for you to memorize all the numbers or become an expert on cybersecurity trends and threats. We’ll do that.

We just want you to know two things. We are watching the development of these trends closely so to protect our clients. We want to understand and respect how serious this problem still is, especially for small business in the area. This is no time to forget about cybersecurity just because CBS News has. The threat is more real than it has ever been.

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