phishing . Cybercriminals generally use phishing to steal employee usernames and passwords which enable attackers to masquerade as a legitimate employee and manoeuvre undetected through a company ’ s networks – either onpremises or cloud .
Attackers can steal data , plant malware or conduct other harmful actions without detection . They may use stolen corporate credentials themselves or sell the credentials to other threat actors .
In 2020 , phishing attack numbers will continue to rise , with attempts now being launched through cloud applications , in addition to traditional emails . The implicit trust users have in their corporate cloud environments will inadvertently leave them more vulnerable to phishing tactics .
Ransomware – 65 % of global organisations reported a ransomware infection in 2019 . In March 2020 , ransomware attacks increased 148 % according to VMware . Victims of the 11 biggest ransomware attacks ( so far ) have spent over $ US144 million on ransomware clean-up costs , ranging from investigation to recovery , to added prevention and paying hackers ransoms .
Ransomware is pervasive because it is so effective and provides a relatively easy path for attackers to achieve devastating effects . Ransomware kits are cheap and readily available on the Dark Web .
Cloud Jacking – COVID-19 has accelerated Digital Transformation , notably with many organisations increasing cloud adoption and shifting more and more services and workloads into the cloud . The massive volumes of data being stored in the cloud make it top target for malicious actors .
While cloud computing and cloud storage often offer better security than on-premises solutions , organisations can ’ t assume that all data stored in the cloud is safe . Hackers have infiltrated cloud computing infrastructure and stolen data on many occasions . For example , the Capital One breach resulted in 106 million records being exposed .
In 2020 and beyond , attacks on cloudbased architectures will continue to rise . Misconfiguration will be the main reason for majority of the incidents according to
Ransomware kits are cheap and readily available on the Dark Web . www . intelligentciso . com | Issue 30
75