Business email scams, Ransomware causing cyber threats to escalate

Cyber threats reached an all-time high in the year of 2016, with ransomware and business email scams gaining increased fame among the cyber criminals searching to extort enterprises, in accordance to a latest study by security technology company Trend Micro.

A 752% increase in new ransomware families resulted in $1 billion in losses for enterprises globally, the report claimed. Trend Micro and the Zero Day Initiative (ZDI), a program initiated by Trend Micro’s TippingPoint unit to reward security researchers for responsibly revealing the vulnerabilities, discovered 765 vulnerabilities in the year of 2016.

Of these, 678 were brought to ZDI through its bug bounty program, then verified and revealed to the impacted vendors. Compared with vulnerabilities found by Trend Micro and ZDI in the year of 2015, Apple analyzed a 145% increase in vulnerabilities, while Microsoft bugs reduced by 47%.

“As risks have diversified and grown in sophistication, cyber criminals have shifted on from significantly targeting people to focusing on where the money is—enterprises,” stated Ed Cabrera, chief cyber security officer for Trend Micro. “Throughout the year of 2016, we witnessed threat actors extort companies and agencies for the sake of profitability, and we do not anticipate this trend slowing down.”

In the year of 2016, the Trend Micro Smart Protection Network blocked more than 81 billion threats for the whole year, a 56% increase from the year of 2015. In the second half of 2016, more than 3,000 attacks each second were blocked. During this time period, 75 billion of blocked attempts were email based, demonstrating that business email scams remains the top entry point for threats.

Throughout the course of twelve months, the number of ransomware families grew to 247 from 29. One leading factor to elaborate the increase is the profitability of ransomware. However, people and organizations are motivated not to pay ransoms, cyber criminals still handled to rake in almost $1 billion previous year.