22 cybersecurity statistics you need to know about in 2022

NEWS

As 2021 comes to an end and we enter a more hopeful new year, we believe this list of cybersecurity statistics can help you stay ahead of the curve in the security and privacy game over the next 12 months. We hope this list has helped you understand the cybersecurity industry.

Here are the 22 most influential cybersecurity stats we need to know about in 2022:

01. 2021 was the highest average cost of a data breach in 17 years, rising from $3.86 million to $4.24 million per year. (IBM 2021 Data Breach Cost Report)

02. Driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, telecommuting has had a direct impact on the cost of data breaches. The average cost of a data breach is $1.07 million higher. (IBM 2021 Data Breach Cost Report)

03. The most common cause of data breaches is theft of user credentials. As a common attack vector, these create 20% of vulnerabilities, which cost an average of $4.37 million. (IBM 2021 Data Breach Cost Report)

By mid-2021, IT management software provider Kaseya's system was compromised by the Sodinokibi Ransomware, which demanded a ransom of $70 million – the largest ransomware fee ever requested. (ESET Threat Report T2 2021)

05. Phishing attacks are linked to 36% of vulnerabilities, an increase of 11%, which may be partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As expected, threat actors have been observed to adjust their phishing campaigns based on news that is released at any time. (Verizon 2021 Data Breach Investigation Report)

Social engineering attacks are the most serious threat to public administration, accounting for 69% of all public administration violations analyzed by Verizon in 2021. (Verizon 2021 Data Breach Investigation Report)

07. Shortly after the disclosure of Log4Shell, a key vulnerability in the Log4j logging utility, in December 2021, ESET detected and blocked hundreds of thousands of exploit attempts, most of which were located in the United States and the United Kingdom. ( ESET Research)

08. In 2021, there has been an astonishing increase in the detection of Android banking malware. T1 grew an incredible 158.7% and T2 continued to grow by 49%. This should be seen as a worrying trend, as banking Trojans have a direct impact on the financial well-being of their targets. ( ESET Threat Report T2 2021)

Four years on, WannaCryptor (also known as WannaCry) remains a global threat to be reckoned with. In T2, the infamous Trojan horse harms machines vulnerable to the EternalBlue vulnerability, topping the ESET Ransomware Detection Chart, accounting for 21.3% of detections. (ESET Threat Report T2 2021)

10. Cryptocurrency investment scams are as popular as ever. Between October 2020 and May 2021, victims were defrauded of more than $80 million. The actual number is expected to be higher, as many are ashamed to admit that they have been deceived. (U.S. Federal Trade Commission)

11. Cryptocurrencies have been the preferred payment method for cybercriminals for some time, especially when it comes to ransomware. Up to $5.2 billion in bitcoin outgoing transactions could be related to ransomware spending involving the top 10 most common ransomware variants. (FinCEN Report on Ransomware Trends in Bank Secrecy Law Data)

At the beginning of the year, the infamous Emotet botnet, one of the longest-lasting and most pervasive malware threats, was compromised in a massive global law enforcement operation. Approximately 700 command and control servers offline during bankruptcy (Europol)

The Cyber security Workforce Estimate assessed the number of cybersecurity professionals available worldwide and estimated a pool of about 4.2 million in 2021. This represents an increase of 700,000 compared to the previous year. [ 2021 (ISC) 2 Cybersecurity Workforce Study]

14. The same study also concluded that the cybersecurity workforce gap decreased for the second consecutive year. In 2020, the number of additional cybersecurity experts needed for organizations to protect their assets was 3.12 million, but that number shrank to 2.72 million in 2021. [ 2021 (ISC) 2 Cybersecurity Workforce Study]

15. To make up for the shortage of cybersecurity professionals needed to effectively protect an organization's critical assets, the global cybersecurity workforce must grow by up to 65 percent. [ 2021 (ISC) 2 Cybersecurity Workforce Study]

16. A total of 82% of organizations have acknowledged increasing their cybersecurity budgets over the past year, and these funds account for up to 15% of total IT spending. (Accenture's State of Cybersecurity Resiliency Report 2021)

17. In recent years, threat actors have shifted from using ransomware to infecting systems with double ransomware, in which case they also threaten to leak data and release it to the public or sell it. The threat of leaking stolen data has increased dramatically, from 8.7% in 2020 to 81% in the second quarter of 2021. （ENISA Threat Landscape 2021）

18. The total cost of fixing ransomware attacks increases significantly. While the cost in 2020 was $761,106, the total cost of fixing a ransomware attack in 2021 soared to $1.85 million. (ENISA Threat Landscape 2021)

19. The number of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks is also on the rise, in part because of the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 10 million attacks occurred in 2020, an increase of 1.6 million over the previous year. (ENISA Threat Landscape 2021)

20. In 2020, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Internet Crime Center (IC3) received a record 791,790 cybercrime complaints, with reported losses of approximately $4.2 billion. (FBI's 2020 Internet Crime Report)

21. According to the FBI's latest available data, business email intrusion (BEC) scams remain the most costly cybercrime, with losses of more than $1.86 billion in 2020. In contrast, the second-most expensive scam – trust/love fraud – recorded losses of "only" about $600 million. ( 2020 Cybercrime Report)

22.Older adults are disproportionately affected by cybercrime, as approximately 28% of fraud losses are caused by victims over the age of 60. The damage to elderly victims is about $1 billion. (IC3 2020 Fraud Report)

Note: This article is reported by E Security Compilation.