The coronavirus pandemic has created the perfect environment for cybercrime to flourish as the manufacturing sector has seen a "substantial increase" in cybercrime, according to the latest report from Verizon.
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The unprecedented increase in the number of people working from home or furloughed during the various lockdowns has seen phishing attacks suffer an 11% rise while the volume of ransomware attacks increased by 6%, the report states.
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The Verizon Business 2021 Data Breach Investigations Report analyses 29,207 quality incidents of which 5,258 were confirmed breaches.
The report found that 61% of the breaches analysed involved credential data, with 95% of the organisations targeted by personal breaches clocking anywhere between 637 million and 3.3 billion malicious login attempts through the year.
Furthermore, instances of Misrepresentation increased 15-fold compared to the same period last year.
The report also highlighted the challenges facing businesses as they move more of their business functions to the cloud - with attacks on web applications representing 39% of all breaches.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on many of the security challenges organizations are currently facing,” said Tami Erwin, CEO, Verizon Business.
“As the number of companies switching business-critical functions to the cloud increases, the potential threat to their operations may become more pronounced, as malicious actors look to exploit human vulnerabilities and leverage an increased dependency on digital infrastructures," she added.
Within the manufacturing sector, there is a key relationship between security and safety, particularly when referring to the production line and supply chains themselves.
Coordinated attacks on industrial infrastructure can often be catastrophic, such as with the Norsk Hydro incident in 2019 or Ukraine in 2016.
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The report found the financial sector was most at risk from ransomware - attacks which demand a financial bounty before the malware is removed.
Similarly, the retail industry continued to be a target for pretexting and phishing attacks, usually by perpetrators seeking financial gain through stolen credit card information or any personal data.
Phishing attacks are also very common in the public administration sector and the data suggests that actors who can craft credible phishing email correspondence are stealing data at "alarming rates" in this sector.
Verizon estimates that at least 92% of the attacks analysed were done so for financial gain, whereas 6% were conducted for the purpose of espionage.
As such, a breakdown of compromised data shows personal or credential information making up the majority of that stolen.
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Alex Pinto, the report's author, said: "It is tempting to think that a vast array of threats demands a sweeping and revolutionary solution. However, the reality is far more straightforward.
He added: "The truth is that, whilst organizations should prepare to deal with exceptional circumstances, the foundation of their defences should be built on strong fundamentals - addressing and mitigating the threats most pertinent to them.”
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