Understanding potential cyber threats and planning preventive strategies are integral components of cybersecurity management. Verizon's 2023 Data Breach Investigation Report provides insightful analysis that can enhance cybersecurity protocols while improving human risk management practices.
As ransomware costs continue to skyrocket and social engineering schemes remain financially driven, it's clear that attackers remain active. To mitigate such threats, Beyond Identity recommends adopting Zero Trust Authentication as a strategy for protection.
Business Email Compromise (BEC)
BEC (Business Email Compromise) is an email hacking technique used by cyber criminals to steal money or sensitive data from businesses and organizations. Cybercriminals typically impersonate trusted business partners or executives and persuade employees into sending funds directly. BEC may also gain entry to networks enabling criminals to gain entry and steal login credentials, launch ransomware attacks or install malware onto them.
An Advanced Business Email Compromise (BEC) attack typically starts with cyber criminals gathering intelligence about a company using publicly available data, such as websites, social media accounts or press releases from that organization. They may then spoof key employee emails and send out malicious phishing emails in an effort to obtain sensitive data from employees.
Hackers typically target employees by sending out fake invoices and requests for wire transfers that appear legitimate, sometimes using the help of fake lawyers to appear more legitimate. Because hackers do not know your industry well, you should expect odd spelling and grammatical errors in BEC emails; hackers might also include words such as "urgent", "quick", or "important" in their subject lines to increase pressure on recipients.
BEC attacks come in various forms; typically involving senior-level employees transferring funds or information externally. This can pose serious problems for companies as it leads to both financial losses and reputation damage.
In 2021, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that global losses due to Business Email Compromise scams exceeded $43 billion and increased victim count significantly; small and midsize businesses were especially susceptible.
As BEC attacks become increasingly frequent, businesses must take steps to mitigate them. Employee training on recognizing and responding to BEC attacks should also be provided as well as investing in security solutions that detect and prevent BEC attacks from being executed; SOCRadar VIP Protection offers one such solution that can protect organizations against these types of threats.
Phishing
cybersecurity professionals are well aware of the rising costs associated with ransomware attacks. Unfortunately, Verizon Business recently published its 16th Annual Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR), which examined 16,312 security incidents and 5,199 breaches over 12 months and shed light on cybercriminal activity as it increased. Furthermore, this year's DBIR provides insight into growing complexity of cyber threats while emphasizing robust defenses as vital against them.
One of the more alarming findings from this year's DBIR is the alarming rise in both size and sophistication of phishing attacks, likely as a result of criminals using various techniques such as pretexting and spoofing to fool unsuspecting users into clicking malicious links or attachments; victims have even responded to such emails with passwords or bank account details that result in serious financial loss for themselves and others.
The 2023 DBIR report highlights stolen credentials as the entry point of choice for cyberattacks, leading to exposure of sensitive data such as patient records or payment card information. Furthermore, human elements account for 85-75% of data breaches resulting in exposure; most often through social engineering methods like phishing or exploiting vulnerabilities. Finally, healthcare-related breaches have seen an uptick; predominantly due to insider threats.
As the global economy expands, so too do cyberattacks and data breaches. Organizations can reduce their risk by following these top tips from Verizon DBIR:
To prevent becoming another statistic, ensure your organization employs best practices to combat common threats such as multi-factor authentication for all devices and applications, creating an incident response management program with policies, plans, procedures, defined roles, training and communication to detect, respond to and mitigate any incidents or breaches, as well as installing a threat intelligence platform which provides visibility into recent attack tactics used by attackers allowing businesses to quickly recognize emerging threats before they damage customers and operations.
Credential Theft
Organizations have long taken measures to combat cyber threats and protect their data. Unfortunately, however, cyber criminals remain relentless. According to Verizon DBIR report (2023), which examined 16,312 incidents and 5,199 breaches across 81 countries analyzed from 2016, ransomware remains the top financial gain threat targeting businesses for financial gain with stolen credentials providing initial access while phishing attacks are the primary form of attack method used.
The 2023 DBIR report highlights that 74% of breaches involve human error, misuse of privileges or social engineering techniques to obtain credentials for exploiting IT systems. Attackers know users can often be their weakest link and utilizing social engineering techniques is often more effective in breaking into IT systems than hacking them directly.
As per this research, phishing attacks remained the top attack vector, and 71% of healthcare-sector phishing attacks were financially driven. Therefore, healthcare organizations must prioritize employee training programs, implement multifactor authentication mechanisms, and conduct regular phishing simulations to minimize the risks posed by successful attacks.
Education remains another industry in which phishing remains a serious threat, due to attacks targeting faculty, staff, students and parents that can successfully steal their credentials. Therefore it's crucial for educational institutions to prioritize security awareness training programs as well as implement reliable email filtering solutions and conduct regular phishing simulations to protect themselves against such attacks.
Though threat actors remain persistent, it's worrying that their approach remains effective. Even after years of warnings, changing password requirements, and implementing multiple forms of authentication, the Ponemon Institute's latest report indicates credential theft remains at the core of nearly 50% of data breaches. Many organizations fail to remove passwords when employees leave, or revoke credentials that have been compromised, which allows attackers to reuse old passwords in future attacks. To combat this risk, your business should implement a password management solution which automatically manages passwords to keep them secure.
Ransomware
Verizon's 2023 Data Breach Report, or the "DBIR," is one of the most anticipated and insightful reports in cybersecurity. Analyzing actual security incidents to uncover trends, patterns, and root causes.
DBIR highlights the most frequent attacks and their effects on businesses of all sizes. It details attack methods used by cybercriminals to gain entry to data, along with recommendations to enhance security and resilience.
This year's DBIR highlights the rise of ransomware. Ransomware is a type of malicious software that encrypts data and then demands payment in order to restore it, according to reports by healthcare organizations particularly vulnerable to attacks from ransomware. According to this year's research findings, cost associated with ransomware incidents have doubled over two years as healthcare organizations are especially at risk from such cyber threats.
The Verizon DBIR also highlights phishing as a growing concern, wherein threat actors pose as reliable sources to gain credentials or trick employees into clicking a malicious link. Although phishing attacks have decreased overall, this threat remains significant - in fact it accounted for 36% of breaches Verizon investigated!
The DBIR revealed that cybercriminals frequently employ business email compromise and social engineering attacks against senior executives or other high-profile individuals in an attempt to obtain sensitive data or gain funds illegally.
Overall, the DBIR indicates that financial motivations account for nearly 95% of breaches. Given this evidence, it comes as no surprise that investment fraud was named the leading source of online losses in the US by IC3's 2022 Internet Crime Report with median losses per victim estimated at $50,000.
DBIR report suggests that organizations improve their threat detection capabilities by adopting Zero Trust Authentication as the only effective defense against common threats, like ransomware. Zero Trust Authentication is a next-generation security solution which continuously assesses risks across endpoints and your entire ecosystem of security management tools ensuring only valid traffic passes through.
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