Microsoft had released its Digital Defence Report detailing how cybercriminals are becoming more sophisticated in how they carry out their attacks. Looking at data from the past year, the report shows how these attacks are becoming harder to spot, meaning they are targeting even the savviest of people.
What’s more, the report shows that ransomware was the most common incident response engagement from October 2019 to July this year. In total, a staggering 13 billion malicious emails were blocked by Microsoft in 2019, with over a billion of those containing phishing links.
On a somewhat positive note, the rate of COVID-19 related attacks has dropped since its peak back in March.
Tom Burt, Corporate VP for customer security at Microsoft told Infosecurity “Attackers have exploited the COVID-19 crisis to reduce their dwell time within a victim’s system — compromising, exfiltrating data and, in some cases, ransoming quickly — apparently believing that there would be an increased willingness to pay as a result of the outbreak. In some instances, cyber-criminals went from initial entry to ransoming the entire network in under 45 minutes,”
