The constant surge in the number of COVID-19 cases across the world has led to businesses adopting a work from home environment which has increased cyber-attacks due to vulnerable securities.
As the pandemic began to surge around the world, the IT security firm McAfee saw a 605 percent increase in Q2 2020. These attacks again increased by 240 percent in Q3 and 114 percent in Q4.
McAfee had recently released its Threats Report: April 2021, examining the cybercriminal activity related to malware and the evolution of cyber threats in the third and the fourth quarters of 2020. McAfee Labs observed an average of 648 threats per minute in Q4 which is an increase of 60 threats per minute over Q3. The Powersheel threats surged 208 percent due to the increase in Donoff malware activity. Added a media report.
“The world and enterprises adjusted amidst pandemic restrictions and sustained remote work challenges, while security threats continued to evolve in complexity and increase in volume. 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”, said Raj Samani, McAfee fellow and chief scientist.
The McAfee report further added that malware was the most reported cause of security incidents. The McAfee Labs observed 588 threats per minute, an increase of 169 threats per minute (40 percent) in Q3 2020 over Q4 which observed 648 threats per minute, an increase of 60 threats per minute (10 percent)
Incidents related to new vulnerabilities increased 100 percent in Q4, malware and targeted attacks increased by 43 percent and account hijacking increased by 30 percent.
McAfee observed a 100 percent surge in the publicly disclosed cyber incidents in Europe from Q3 to Q4, an 84 percent increase in Asia and 36 percent in North America.
McAfee observed about 3.1 million external attacks on the cloud accounts, aggregating and anonymising cloud usage data from more than 30 million McAfee Cloud users worldwide during Q4 of2020. This data represents companies from the Financial Services, Healthcare, Public Sector, Education, Retail, Technology, Manufacturing, Energy, Utilities, Legal, Real estate, Transportation and Business Services.
