The Ever-Changing Targets of Cybercrime
Today, no one is safe from online attacks—cybercriminals target everything from large corporations to small nonprofits with equal, devastating effectiveness. Here are some of their favorite victims.
During the pandemic, the health care industry has experienced increasing levels of ransomware attacks. In addition to stealing medical records and selling them on the dark web, attackers break into health care systems, encrypting critical data, and demanding ransom payments to bring them back online. In November, the situation became so dire that the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency along with the FBI warned health care providers that they had obtained credible information about an imminent threat to the public health sector, and urged elevated precautions against attackers.
Hospitals and Healthcare Companies
Comprising one of the largest industry sectors on the planet, manufacturing companies have long been among the most frequent victims of cyberattacks. As factories increasingly rely on automation and Internet of Things technologies to power production, savvy attackers have many more points of entry to target. And because manufacturers often store sensitive data from customers, ransomware criminals have found that they’re often willing to pay up—making them even more appealing targets in the future.
Manufacturing
No industry is targeted as much as the financial services sector—nearly 20 percent of attacks are carried out against these companies. According to research by the Boston Consulting Group, financial service firms experience up to 300 times as many cyberattacks per year compared with other industries. Even more alarming, cyberattacks against the financial sector increased by 238 percent from February to April 2020, during the initial surge in online work caused by COVID-19.
Finance
In the past two months, hundreds of cyber incidents affecting state and local governments and public agencies have been reported in 47 states, and that number could be vastly higher. These ransomware and phishing schemes are so effective because, in large part, governments haven’t devoted enough funding to preventing them, making their networks easy targets for opportunists. This is a serious problem since those networks contain extremely sensitive information, including social security numbers, birth certificates, and bank account details of millions of individuals and businesses.
State and Local Governments and Education
The insurance industry, which handles an enormous quantity of personal data, has been a leader in preventing infiltration of their networks—yet it still happens regularly, with thousands of security incidents reported last year alone. According to a survey from KPMG Global CEO Outlook, only 43 percent of insurance executives said their company was prepared for a cyberattack. In addition, tech adoption in the industry—digital claims, mobile apps, and connections to the Internet of Things—has created a raft of potential new weaknesses for cybercriminals to exploit.
Insurance
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