Spine Chilling Cyber Security Facts

It’s that time of year again. The air is getting colder, leaves are starting to fall, and kids in costumes are running from door to door. Before you turn on the next horror movie and jump at the slightest bump in the night, take a moment to read these truly scary facts about cyber security.

Just like a ghost, cyber attackers come to your place without knocking, get inside, does whatever they want. Initially, changes get unnoticed and people living in the house think maybe it’s them or some other family member. Then after several incidences happen and the person starts to investigate themselves, this gives a signal to cyber attackers and they like ghosts make a big incident because they have been poked. No major damage has already been done but luckily unlike ghosts, cyber attackers let you stay in your company whereas ghosts even let you stay in your house. Phew! Right? Not so quickly.

There is a similarity between them as well that like ghosts don’t allow the person to stay in the house or don’t let people inside leave the house similarly, cyber attackers don’t allow the company to have access to the data nor the cyber attacker get rid of the stolen data from the company so quickly.

No, in a situation like instead of going to a church, the company visits the bank. Yes, to pay off the cyber attackers.

Earlier, technology was not much advance that companies could store their data if stolen, and neither were data so much protect so as a result cyber attackers used to ask for the money to rid of data or otherwise they would leak the data but now it has hit a different level.

Now, technology has improved a lot allowing the companies to store data of huge capacity and also providing high security. This information or advancement is not unnoticed by cyber attackers. Cyber attackers now know that companies already have their data in back up so what they do is threaten the companies to give the cyber attackers money or otherwise they would sell the company’s data to the highest bidder.

Facts from the cyber security world that are sure to give you goosebumps

1.     According to Cybint, mostly 95% of cybersecurity breaches are occurring due to t human error.

2.     Proofprint says that nearly 88% of organizations had experienced spear-phishing attempts in the year 2019.

3.     Between January 1, 2005, and May 31, 2020, A record of 11,762 breaches were noted from January 2005 to May 2020 as per the records from ID Theft Resource Center.

4.     It is seen that common email attachment types like .doc and .dot being first to contribute to 37% of malicious attachments and the second most common attachment being .exe at 19.5% as shown by Symantec.

5.     Nearly 300 billion passwords were estimated to be used by humans and machines throughout the world, as per Cybersecurity Media.

6.     It almost takes 207 days to identify a breach in 2020 as per IBM.

7.     Nearly the average period of a breach lasted 280 days from identification to containment. IBM.

8.     In 2019, an MGM data breach took place. As a result, hackers leaked the personal records of 142 million hotel guests as mentioned by CPO Magazine.

9.     In 2018, Under Armor mentioned that “My Fitness Pal” was hacked which led to causing damages to 150 million users.

10.  In 2016, Uber said that hackers stole information from over 57 million riders and drivers.

11.  as per CSO Online, nearly 94% of malware is delivered by email.

12.  It has become very necessary to be cautious since nearly $17,700 is lost every minute b phishing attacks, said CSO Online.

13.  Attacks on IoT devices have increased thrice from the first half of 2019 as per CSO Online.

14.  IoT devices experience nearly 5,200 attacks per month reported by Symantec.

15.  IT Governance reports that 88% of companies spent more than $1 million to prepare for the GDPR.

16.  Nieman Lab says that 1,000 news sources blocked EU readers to avoid the GDPR compliance rules.

17.  Datto mentions that the WannaCry ransomware attack cost the National Health Service (NHS) over $100 million.

18.  As per Accenture, the banking industry was the primary target of most cybercrime. The banking industry generated costs of $18.3 million in 2018.

19.  As per Purplesec, the U.S. government recorded 1.2 billion records being breached in 2018.

20.  It is said to be the biggest breach of all time when 3 billion Yahoo accounts were hacked in 2013, reported by the New York Times.

21.  Near 15 % of Lifestyle apps and 7% of entertainment apps belong to the category of malicious apps as per Symantec. this is because it is a source of entertainment.

22.  Accenture states that for a malware attack to take action it would need 50 days on average.

23.  36 billion records were exposed in the first half of 2020 by data breaches reported by RiskBased.

24.  IBM revealed that it would cost $3.86 million during a data breach as of 2020.

25.  According to Verizon, breaches that occurred in 2020 were had personal data involved by 58%.

26.  In 2020, Marriott had a security breach that impacted data greater than 5.2 million hotel guests reported by Marriott.

27.  The average ransomware payment increased by 33% in 2020 over 2019, to $111,605 reported by Fintech News.

28.  After declining in 2019, phishing grew in 2020 to account for 1 in every 4,200 emails reported by Symantec.

29.  Security services deemed to be an estimated 50% of cybersecurity budgets in 2020 reported by Gartner.

30.  Since the pandemic started, the FBI reported a 300% increase in reported cybercrimes reported by IMC Grupo.

31.  27% of COVID-19 cyberattacks target banks or healthcare organizations and COVID-19 is accounted for a 238% rise in cyberattacks on banks in 2020 reported by Fintech News.

32.  In April 2020, Google shut off 18 million daily malware and phishing emails related to Coronavirus reported by Google.

33.  The global information security market is predicted to reach $170.4 billion in 2022. reported by Gartner.

34.  By 2023, the total number of global DDoS attacks will be 15.4 million reported by Cisco.

35.  The U.S. government granted approximately $18.78 billion for cybersecurity spending in 2021 reported by Atlas VPN.

36.  Ransomware damage impacts will increase to $20 billion by 2021 and a business will fall prey to a ransomware attack every 11 seconds at that time reported by Cybersecurity Ventures.

37.  Damage related to cybercrime is forecasted to hit $10.5 trillion annually by 2025 reported by Cybersecurity Ventures.

38.  Greater than 70 percent of security executives assume that their budgets for the fiscal year 2021 will shrink reported by Mckinsey.

39.  According to Cybercrime Magazine, it was recorded that there would be a 350 percent rise in open cybersecurity positions from 2013 to 2021.

40.  According to Cybersecurity Ventures, damage caused by cybercrime would be close to $10.5 trillion per year by 2025.

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Ways in which a user can keep themselves out of grave danger of cyber-crimes

• As people are coming more in contact with the internet and social media, people share so much information about themselves publically and sometimes to the unknown as well. It is very necessary to know that one must share minimal data on the internet and defiantly not with strangers.
• Different technology models have different settings but it is necessary to be thorough with devices to avoid privacy breaches. It is very important to keep guards up all the time and always keep your privacy setting on all the time even if you are not using the internet.
• Now we browse very often and almost everything which is why we get so much dependent on them. It is necessary to ensure that while browsing if you receive a suspicious message or any warning or anything unnecessary which you did not ask for, leave the website. Always make sure you keep browsing safe.
• It is very necessary to ensure that you have a secured connection because nowadays breaches can happen even from different countries with the help of an internet connection which is why it is very necessary to have an internet connection from a secure brand. Probably use VPN for more security.
• If it was only possible that everything was free in this world but it is not and that is for a good reason. Just like anyone, the cyber attacker knows that people want to download for free and they wait for this opportunity to plant seed on your phone to be accessed later.
• Wherever you choose to create a password, it is always recommended to create a password with a charter, uppercase, lower case, and numbers and this is for your own safety. If you choose to create a password which could be a common guess, then it would be very easy to access your data.
• Nobody wants to go to the store and collect their articles sometimes and instead choose to buy online. Companies do claim that their website is secure and companies do try to keep them secure but similarly, cyber attackers do try to breach them and set a fishing net for you.
• It is also advised to use antivirus for even more secured protection.