Skip to content

Business Threats

In this section, we will look at a wider cybersecurity threat landscape, and discuss the impact of these threats.

The NCSC (National Cyber Security Centre) has an overview of the Top threats to businesses.

This highlights the following issues:

Ransomware

Ransomware attacks were the dominant trend. With the well known WannaCry attack affecting machines worldwide and affecting organisations such as the NHS, Nissan, Renault and FedEx.

Ransomware is where the attacker is able to take control of the files on a system, and restrict the users access to them. This is usually done by encrypting the files on the target. The victim is then required to pay the attacker for the files to be decrypted.

While WannaCry was well publicised, it is also interesting to note that less direct ransom based attacks also increased. Organisations were threatened with DDOS (Distributed Denial Of Service, where the attacker overwhelms the infrastructure of the target, shutting down access to the victims servers) attacks on infrastructure, unless a ransom was paid. It has been calculated that DDOS style attacks increased by 91% over 2017.

Data Breaches

The number, and scale, of data breaches continues to rise. There were several large scale data breaches, including:

  • Equifax: Over 200 Million account details released
  • Verizon: Over 14 Million account details
  • Uber: 57 Million account details leaked

One interesting point to note with the Uber attack, was the organisation paid $100,000 to the hackers to delete the data. This mix between ransom and data breaches seems to be a trend of cyber criminals monetising their hacking activities.

It also seems that information from data breeches is being aggregated. As of January 2019, the largest collection of credentials was released, with over 2.7 Billion records, and 773 Million Unique account details, was discovered by Troy Hunt1.

Supply Chain Issues

Installing malware into well know applications, and persuading the users to download and install them. This means that "legitimate" software becomes an attack vector.

While the NCSC report focuses on business, there has been an increase in malware for mobile devices2,
This comes partially from users installing untrusted apps, but also includes issues with hardware and software on the devices themselves.

Phishing and Social Engineering

A rise in phishing attacks shows this technique of compromising a system is still a major threat. (Around 90% of all cyber attacks begin with some form of Phishing). We will discuss this in a future section.

The Internet of things (that go bump in the night)

With the rise in a "connected lifestyle" (Estimates of > 11 Billion "Things" connected by 2018) there have been some major issues with IoT devices. Domestic items like fridges were discovered to be part of botnets. (A botnet, is a collection of compromised computers, which can be used as part of a cyberattack such as Denial of Service) While this kind of attack is relatively new, as the devices increases in number and processing power, they represent a significant security threat.

The Cost of Threats.

Estimates of the cost for cyber attack to businesses vary, with ENSIA identifying costs that varies from $474,000 to $22,000,000 per company per year.

The NCSC (National Cyber Security Centre), and the UK government take an annual survey of cyber security incidents, which gives some insight into how UK organisations are affected.

Headline Figures

According to the NCSC, over ⅔ of businesses suffered some form of cyber attack in 2019, with most organisations experiencing approximately 6 attacks in a year. However, some organisations experienced tens of thousands of cyber attacks during the same period.

It is interesting to note that organisations are more likely to face intentional breaches, with only 25% reporting that their most disruptive security incident was accidental.

The most common cause of these cyber attacks were Phishing and Social engineering, with 75% of the organisations surveyed reporting this form of attack. Interestingly around 30% of organisations also reported being impersonated by attackers, either in emails or through a website.

There was a fall in the number of Virus, spyware or malware infections, with only 25% of organisations reporting this, however Ransomware attacks were reported separately with around 15% of all organisations reporting a ransomware attempt as made.

The average cost to businesses was £3,100 for each cyber attack experienced. This may seem low compared to the headline figures from ENSIA, but the figures are based on individual breaches, compared to the yearly figures quoted in their study.

Summary

In this article we have looked at the threats businesses face. We have also discussed the cost of these threats to an organisation.

Optional Discussion #businessThreats

Discuss on Aula (#businessThreats) the biggest threat to business Can you find any clear statistics on this, has the threat changed over time?

  1. Troy Hunt.com on the 733 Million Record breach ↩

  2. https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/gb/security/research-and-analysis/threat-reports/roundup/2017-mobile-threat-landscape. ↩

Back to top