Over 620 Million Ransomware Attacks Detected in 2021

Corporate IT teams had been faced with a triple-digit (105%) development in ransomware attacks final yr to around 623 million, according to SonicWall.

The security vendor’s recently published 2022 SonicWall Cyber Menace Report was compiled with investigation from a single million security sensors in just about 215 countries, as nicely as third-party sources.

Virtually all monitored threats, which includes IoT malware, encrypted threats and cryptojacking, rose 12 months-on-calendar year in 2021. Nevertheless, the increase of ransomware has been significantly meteoric, surging 232% given that 2019, with detections up virtually 319 million on 2020 figures.

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Together with an 1885% maximize in attacks on government targets, healthcare (755%), instruction (152%) and retail (21%) also knowledgeable a surge in ransomware threats.

SonicWall mentioned it also identified a whole of 442,151 never-right before-viewed malware variants in 2021, a 65% calendar year-on-yr raise and an average of 1211 per working day.

Encrypted threats – destructive attacks concealed in HTTPS visitors – elevated 167% in 2020, reaching 2.5 million by the finish of the year.

Cryptojacking attacks rose 19% globally to a history superior of 97.1 million, though IoT malware detections amplified 6% to 60.1 million about the calendar year, in accordance to SonicWall.

Curiously, the vendor also saw a fast and significant effects from Log4Shell exploitation. Threat actors logged 142 million exploit tries among December 11 and January 31, amounting to 2.7 million for each working day.

According to SonicWall, these makes an attempt experienced by now passed the just one million mark inside of 3 times of public disclosure.

SonicWall president and CEO Monthly bill Conner stated the surge in threats has also spurred defenders into improving their resilience.

“Businesses outside of cybersecurity doubled their initiatives to fight cybercrime. From mid-2020 to 2021, the number of CEOs who mentioned cybersecurity hazards had been the most important danger to small-expression growth almost doubled, and corporate boards are ever more forming cybersecurity committees,” he argued.

“This has translated to increased funding: world wide cybersecurity spending was projected to grow 12.4% by the stop of 2021, twice as quick as in 2020.”