2018 Cyber Threat Report

As a managed IT services and solutions provider, it is critical that we align ourselves with the best vendors in the industry to deliver the level of service our clients trust us to deliver every single day. SonicWall is one of the most trusted names in IT security. They have been fighting the cyber-criminal industry for over 26 years defending small and medium-size businesses and enterprises worldwide. Recently, Sonicwall published their 2018 Cyber Threat Report. The annual threat report frames, compares, and contrasts advances made by both cybersecurity professionals and global cybercriminals. They recorded an alarming and eye opening 9.32 billion malware attacks in 2017 and 12,500 new common vulnerabilities and exposures and make several very interesting observations through their research.

Cyber-attacks are becoming the No. 1 risk to business, brands, operations, and financials.

“The risks to business, privacy and related data grows by the day — so much so that cybersecurity is outranking some of the more traditional business risks and concerns,” said Sonicwall CEO Bill Conner. Here are some interesting takeaways from the report:

•9.32 billion total malware attacks in 2017, an 18.4 percent year-over-year increase from 2016

•Ransomware attacks dropped from 638 million to 184 million between 2016 and 2017

•Ransomware variants; however, increased 101.2 percent

•Traffic encrypted by SSL/TLS standards increased 24 percent, representing 68 percent of total traffic

•Without SSL decryption capabilities in place, the average organization will see almost 900 attacks per year hidden by SSL/TLS encryption

•SonicWall identifies almost 500 new previously unknown malicious files each day

The 71.2% drop from 2016 to 2017 in overall ransomware attacks indicates that security focused providers and vendors were effective at rolling out solutions to mitigate overall exposure to those types of attacks such as WannaCry, Petya, and Bad Rabbit. While the total volume of ransomware attacks was down significantly year over year, the number of ransomware variants created continues an upward trend since 2015. The variant increase, coupled with the associated volume of 184 million attacks, leaves ransomware a prevalent threat. The increase in attacks and threats is also expanding to other areas of technology including encrypted traffic, Microsoft Edge browser, and hardware chip processors. This shows that attackers are becoming more sophisticated and the threat to all businesses is increasing at an alarming rate.

At Connecting Point, we’ve come to believe that an IT strategy must align with a layered security approach; meaning you must have security around the network, your users, your devices, your data, and your processes as an organization. If you’d like to discuss how Connecting Point can protect your organization against Cyber Security threats, contact us.

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