The Verizon Business 2021 Data Breach Investigations Report (2021 DBIR) examines more breaches than ever before and sheds light on how the most common forms of cyber attacks affected the international security landscape during the global pandemic. This year’s report saw 5,258 breaches from 83 contributors across the globe, a third more breaches analysed than last year.
With an unprecedented number of people working remotely, phishing and ransomware attacks increased by 11per cent and 6 per cent respectively, with instances of misrepresentation increasing by 15 times compared to last year. Additionally, breach data showed that 61 per cent of breaches involved credential data (95 per cent of organisations suffering credential stuffing attacks had between 637 and 3.3 billion malicious login attempts through the year).
The report also highlighted the challenges facing businesses as they move more of their business functions to the cloud with attacks on web applications representing 39 per cent of all breaches.
“The Covid-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on many of the security challenges organisations are currently facing. As the number of companies switching business critical functions to the cloud increases, the potential threat to their operations may become more pronounced, as malicious actors look to exploit human vulnerabilities and leverage an increased dependency on digital infrastructures,” said Tami Erwin, CEO, Verizon Business.