Europol has just published their 2019 Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment
The key findings of the report make for interesting reading for Security Managers:
- While the number of ransomware attacks have reduced since 2018, the attackers have shifted their focus to more profitable targets – your businesses!
- Phishing and vulnerable Remote Desktop Protocol attacks are the primary attack vector
- Data is the key target of cyber-crime, either to steal or hold to ransom.
- 2019 has seen an increase in destructive malware such as Germanwiper, giving rise to concern that sabotage attacks could be on the increase.
The report states that:
Last year law enforcement began to see the shift from untargeted, scattergun attacks affecting citizen and businesses alike, to more targeted attacks. Both European law enforcement and Europol’s private sector partners confirm a diminishing number of ransomware attacks targeting individual citizens, and more attacks specifically engineered towards individual private and public sectors entities.
“We were very impressed with the service, I will say, the vulnerability found was one our previous organisation had not picked up, which does make you wonder if anything else was missed.”
Aim Ltd Chief Technology Officer (CTO)