Cisco 2017 Midyear Cybersecurity Report Predicts New "Destruction of Service" Attacks, Scale and Impact of Threats Grows - Seite 2

While Cisco has seen a striking decline in exploit kits, other traditional attacks are seeing a resurgence:

• Spam volumes are significantly increasing, as many adversaries turn to other tried-and-true methods, like email, to distribute malware and generate revenue. Cisco threat researchers anticipate that the volume of spam with malicious attachments will continue to rise while the exploit kit landscape remains in flux.
• Spyware and adware, often dismissed by security professionals as more nuisance than harm, are forms of malware that continue to persist and bring risks to the enterprise. Cisco research sampled 300 companies over a four month period and found that 3 prevalent spyware families infected 20% of the sample. In a corporate environment spyware can steal user and company information, weaken the security posture of devices and increase malware infections.
• Evolutions in ransomware, such as the growth of Ransomware-as-a-Service, make it easier for any criminal regardless of skillset, to carry out these attacks. Ransomware has been grabbing headlines for months and reportedly brought in more than $1 billion in 2016, but this may be mis-directing some organizations, who face an even greater, under-reported threat. Business email compromise, a social engineering attack in which an email designed to trick organizations into transferring money to the attacker, is becoming a highly lucrative threat vector. Between October 2013 and December 2016, $5.3 billion was stolen via BEC between according to The Internet Crime Complaint Center.

Unique Industries Face Common Challenges
As criminals continue to increase the sophistication and intensity of their attacks, businesses across a variety of industries are challenged with keeping up with even some of the foundational cybersecurity requirements. As Information Technology and Operational Technology converge in the Internet of Things, organizations are struggling with visibility and complexity. As part of its Security Capabilities Benchmark Study, Cisco surveyed close to 3000 security leaders across 13 countries and found that across industries, security teams are increasingly overwhelmed by the volume of attacks they are fighting, which leads many to become more reactive, in their protection efforts.