Not surprisingly with the increase in phishing attacks, email security was ranked as the top IT security project of 2021, according to the Greathorn 2021 Email Security Benchmark Report. The top email service used for phishing kits was Gmail.The top three countries where scams were hosted were US, Russia and British Virgin Isles.The top three industries targeted in phishing attacks were technology, retail and finance.Key themes used for scams include COVID, gift cards, and gaming hacks.In 2020, 6.95 million new phishing and scam pages were created, with the highest number of new phishing and scam sites in one month of 206,310.
#CURRENT PHISHING SCAMS 2019 DRIVERS#
In 2020, the key drivers for phishing and fraud were COVID-19, remote work, and technology, said the 2021 State of Phishing & Online Fraud Report. According to the FBI’s IC3, as of 2020 phishing is by far the most common attack performed by cybercriminals. Phishing and other forms of social engineering, with criminals targeting human rather than technical vulnerabilities, remains a tried-and-true attack method. The report also found that 86% of malware is unique to a single PC, and phishing spiked by 510% from January to February 2020 alone. According to IC3, the costliest attacks are business email compromise (BEC) schemes, with 19,369 total complaints and a loss of $1.8 billion.īy September 2020, the average ransom payment peaked at $233,817, according to the 2021 Webroot Brightcloud Threat Report. IC3 saw a 69% increase in complaints from 2019, receiving 791,790 complaints total, with losses exceeding $4.1 billion. In 2020, the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received over 28,500 complaints related to COVID-19, according to the 2020 FBI Internet Crime Report. Nearly half (49%) of IT executives said their top security priority is the protection of sensitive data, according to the 2020 IDG Security Priorities Study, which surveyed 522 IT and security executives. That’s a sharp rise from the 3,950 confirmed breaches (out of 32,002 incidents) from the 2020 DBIR. Of those breaches, 86% were financially motivated. Top cybersecurity threats and trendsĪ total of 5,258 confirmed data breaches occurred in 16 different industries and four world regions, according to the Verizon 2021 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR), which analyzed data from 29,307 incidents.
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The data collectively suggest trends that are likely to continue into the near future. While most of the research cited here was released within the past year, it does not necessarily reflect today’s risk environment. The most vital and current cybersecurity stats below show how threats have grown in scale and complexity over the past year-plus.
#CURRENT PHISHING SCAMS 2019 SOFTWARE#
Piled on top of that is a growing wave of ransomware and software supply chain attacks. This historic increase in cybercrime resulted in everything from financial fraud involving CARES Act stimulus funds and Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans to a spike in phishing schemes and bot traffic. 2021 has been a banner year for cybercriminals, they have taken advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic and the increase in remote work, attacking both technical and social vulnerabilities.