Acronis, one of the world leaders in Cyber Protection, at the conference Black hat 2021 presented its usual report dedicated to digital threatsthose who are confronted daily with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The research examined attack and threat data collected by Acronis’ global network of CPOC centers., which monitor and research digital threats 24/7. Malware data has been collected from more than 250,000 distributed endpoints all over the world they use Acronis Cyber Protect.
The impact of cyber threats on SMEs
Acronis Mid-Year Update analyzed endpoint attacks detected between January and June 2021. The published study found that in the first six months of the year, four out of five organizations faced a cybersecurity threat via a vulnerability in their third-party vendor ecosystem. This poses a number of challenges: For example, the average cost of a data breach has increased to around $ 3.56 million, while the average ransom payment has increased by 33% to more. of $ 100,000.
Candid Wüest, Vice President of Cyber Protection Research at Acronis, tried to explain this situation: “While the increase in attacks affects organizations of all sizes, one aspect that is not sufficiently addressed by those tackling current trends in digital threats is the impact they are having on the IT community. small businesses.big enterprises, small to medium-sized businesses enterprises do not have the funds, resources or personnel skills to counter today’s threats, so they look to IT service providers, but if their systems are compromised, SMEs are at the mercy of hackers ”.
The Acronis report then found that phishing attacks are increasing exponentially. Attacks of this type have indeed increased by 62% between the first and the second quarter of the year (94% of malware is introduced by e-mail). Acronis with its services blocked more than 393,000 malicious and phishing URLs for its customers. Cases of data exfiltration also continue to increase significantly: in 2020, Over 1,300 ransomware victims had their data publicly disclosed after the attack, while during in the first half of 2021, there were over 1,100 data breaches, with an estimated increase of 70% by the end of the year. Another threat detected by Acronis concerns remote workers, who remain a prime target for hackers. In fact, Acronis has noticed an increase in this type of cyberattack globally, with a 300% increase in brute force attacks via Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP).