As organisations the world over have adapted to unprecedented numbers of employees working from home, cybercriminals have been working feverishly to launch Covid-19-themed attacks on a workforce coping with pandemic restrictions and the potential vulnerabilities of remote device and bandwidth security. And as the pandemic began to surge around the world, cybersecurity company McAfee saw a 605% increase in Q2 2020. These attacks again increased by 240% in Q3 and 114% in Q4.
“Amidst pandemic restrictions and sustained remote work challenges, security threats have continued to evolve in complexity and increase in volume,” says Raj Samani, McAfee fellow and chief scientist.
“Though a large percentage of employees grew more proficient and productive in working remotely, enterprises endured more opportunistic Covid-19-related campaigns among a new cast of bad-actor schemes. Furthermore, ransomware and malware targeting vulnerabilities in work-related apps and processes were active and remain dangerous threats capable of taking over networks and data, while costing millions in assets and recovery costs.”
Each quarter, McAfee assesses the state of the cyber threat landscape based on in-depth research, investigative analysis, and threat data gathered by the McAfee Global Threat Intelligence cloud from over a billion sensors across multiple threat vectors around the world.
In Q3 2020, McAfee Labs observed an average of 588 threats per minute, an increase of 169 threats per minute (40%). By the fourth quarter, this average rose to 648 threats per minute, an increase of 60 threats per minute (10%).
The company tracked a 100% increase in publicly reported cyber incidents targeting the technology sector during the fourth quarter of 2020. Reported incidents in the public sector grew by 93% over the same period.
Malware was the most reported cause of security incidents in Q4 followed by account hijackings, targeted attacks and vulnerabilities. Incidents related to new vulnerabilities surged 100% in Q4, malware and targeted attacks each rose 43%, and account hijackings increased 30%.
