Mid Year Cyber Trends Show Continued Relentless Pace of Attacks

Check Point Research has released its mid-year cyber attack trends report, and the results are grim. 

Between cyberwarfare and major ransomware attacks, ransomware groups targeting entire countries and malicious files, this state of the cyber world is bleak. There was a 42% increase in weekly cyberattacks globally, with no region being spared. 

The whole report is worth reading in full. We've pulled out a few email-related highlights:

• Email-delivered attacks are at 89% of all in-the-wild attacks
• 61% of all malicious payloads attached to emails were document types, like xlsx and PDF
• Of those, xlsx files make up 49% of all malicious files
• Groups like Emotet are emailing OneDrive URL links of zip files that contain malicious payloads
• Emotet is the most prevalent malware family globally
• Education is the most attacked sector, with an average of 2,297 a week
• Government is close behind, at 1,669 attacks per week
• Healthcare attacks have increased by 69%, the highest YoY increase observed

Beyond that, CPR talked about the more "Diverse email infection chains" which are due to:

...the implementation of internet macros being blocked by default in Microsoft office, the more sophisticated malware families will accelerate the development of new infection chains, with different file types than just the regular Office files. They will also password protect them to make detection more difficult. It’s important that users are well aware of sophisticated social engineering. Cybercriminals will often send a simple email impersonating someone you know just to get into conversation with you and gain trust before then sending a malicious file.

With increased sophistication and velocity, the onus is on companies to take a preventative approach. Once an attack enters an environment, it's too late.