Fortinet says cyber threats becoming more sophisticated

Cyber security firm Fortinet says cyber threats are increasing and evolving to become more sophisticated and unique threat variants and families are on the rise, while botnet infections continue to infect organizations. The findings form part of the company’s quarterly Global Threat Landscape Report. Some of the highlights of the report are:
 
- Cybercriminals are not only expanding their attack arsenal but also developing new strategies for breaching defenses. Unique malware variants grew 43%, while the number of malware families grew by nearly 32%. The number of unique daily malware detections per firm also rose 62%. In line with these trends, unique exploits increased nearly 10% and the number of exploit detections per firm rose 37%.
 
- Over one-quarter of organizations experienced a mobile malware attack, with the majority being on the Android operating system. In fact, of the threats organizations faced from all attack vectors, 14% of total malware alerts were Android related. By comparison, only .000311% of threats were targeted at Apple iOS.
 
- Cryptojacking remains prevalent and continues to grow in scope. The number of platforms affected by cryptojacking jumped 38% and the number of unique signatures nearly doubled in the past year.
 
- Data shows malicious network traffic represents a higher percentage of overall traffic on weekends and holidays as business traffic slows down significantly since many employees are not working during this time.
 
- The botnet index rose only 2%, though the number of infection days per firm increased 34% from 7.6 days to 10.2 days.
 
Fortinet says to stay ahead of the ongoing efforts of cybercriminals, organizations need to transform their security strategies as part of their digital transformation efforts
 
 

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