Cybersecurity Statistics and Trends

BM reports that the top five most targeted industries in 2020 were as follows. The following statistics account for a total volume of attacks by industry.

1. Finance and insurance: 23%

2. Manufacturing: 17.7%

3. Energy: 11.1%

4. Retail: 10.2%

5. Professional Services: 8.7%

• Ransomware attacks worldwide rose 350% in 2018.

• Ransomware attacks are estimated to cost $6 trillion annually by 2021.

• 50% of the surveyed 582 information security professionals do not believe their organization is prepared to repel a ransomware attack.

• 81% of cyber security experts believe there will be more ransomware attacks than ever in 2019.

• 25% of businesses are estimated to have been victims of cryptojacking

• Cryptojacking activity surged to its peak in December 2017, when more than 8 million cryptojacking events were blocked by Symantec.

• 25% of the WordPress plugins among Alexa’s most popular sites are flagged with critical vulnerabilities that could allow mining botnets in.

• Applications can take 5 – 10 longer to load when a computer is being used for coin mining.

• 56% of IT decision makers say targeted phishing attacks are their top security threat.

• 83% of global infosec respondents experienced phishing attacks in 2018, an increase from 76% in 2017.

• Business email compromise (BEC) scams cost organizations $676 million in 2017.

• CEO fraud is now a $12 billion scam.

• 30% of phishing messages get opened by targeted users and 12% of those users click on the malicious attachment or link.

• Only 3% of targeted users report malicious emails to management.

• 53% of IT and security professionals say they have experienced a targeted phishing attack in 2017.

• Credential compromise rose 70% over 2017, and they’ve soared 280% since 2016.

• 50% of phishing sites now using HTTPS.

• Fake invoices are the #1 disguise for distributing malware.

  • Bill / invoice 15.9%

  • Email delivery failure 15.3%

  • Legal / law enforcement 13.2%

  • Scanned document 11.5%

  • Package delivery 3.9%