How many cyber-attacks does your company get hit with every week?
The number will surprise you!
Check Point Research has just completed a study (How many cyber attacks per week) to determine the number of cyber-attacks organizations encounter.
The study was conducted globally and included over 15 industries. There were two important findings from the survey:
- The number of attacks has increased by 28% in the 3rd Quarter of 2022.
- The average number of attacks an organization faces is over 1,100 attacks per week.
Education leads the list of the most popular targets following COVID-19, where many educators were forced to work remotely. Unfortunately, many of these users were not fully prepared for remote work, leaving opportunities for hackers to infiltrate networks.
- Education/Research organizations face an average of 2,148 attacks per week, up 18% from 2021.
- Government/Military faces 1,564 attacks per week which is a 20% increase and is largely attributed to the war in Ukraine. Just 3 days after the invasion of Ukraine, Check Point Research identified a 196% increase in cyber-attacks on the Ukraine government.
- Healthcare shows one of the largest weekly attacks increase (up 60% from 2021). There are an average of 1,426 cyber-attacks on healthcare organizations each week.
Here is a chart showing all categories for Q3 year-over-year increases:
What Does This Mean For You?
In general, these findings show that all organizations, regardless of size or industry, need to stay vigilant. The reason that there is so much cyber-activity is that they are successful. Hackers are successfully breaching organizations and are profiting wildly from these activities.
Security Training for End Users – is still one of the best things an organization can do to protect themselves. Unfortunately, most breaches still originate from end-user errors (clicking on a link or visiting an infected website).
Email Security and Email Training – although hackers are evolving and are starting to use many different methods to attack businesses, email is still the most effective method. Therefore, organizations should use all the advanced scanning solutions for their email systems. In addition, end users must be continually tested and up-to-date on the latest scams and email attack strategies to avoid becoming victims and endangering their organization.
Software Updates – organizations need to monitor their software systems and ensure they are patched with the latest security patches.
Unified Threat Protection (UTP) is no longer “good enough” to have a firewall and anti-virus. Organizations need to have a comprehensive cyber-security solution. New solutions work together (unified) and create a much stronger and more effective security solution.
Cyber-security Solutions are Ever Evolving
Organizations need to have a cyber-security solution that evolves with the changes that we are seeing globally. It is no longer acceptable to “set it and forget it.” Instead, organizations need to have a process to re-evaluate their cyber-security posture regularly (quarterly or annually) to assess changes to the cyber environment that might necessitate changes to the organization’s cyber-security posture.
Please let us know if you have any questions about the information above and how it relates to your organization’s cyber-security posture.
Be vigilant and be safe!
