In 2023, manufacturing saw the highest share of cyberattacks among the leading industries worldwide. During the examined year, manufacturing companies encountered nearly a quarter of the total cyberattacks. Finance and insurance organizations followed, with around 18 percent. Professional, business, and consumer services ranked third, with 15.4 percent of reported cyberattacks. Healthcare industry and cyberattacks
The healthcare industry is considered one of the most vulnerable sectors to cybercrime. Between October 2021 and September 2022, healthcare organizations worldwide saw various cyberattacks, mostly network and application, as well as malware. Additionally, this sector had the highest average data breach cost throughout recent years, amounting to nearly 11 million U.S. dollars. IT perspective and prevention
With recent technology developments, cybersecurity is crucial to an organization’s success. Realizing this, companies have been gradually increasing cybersecurity investments. Thus, in 2024, the cybersecurity budget worldwide was forecast to increase to nearly 283 billion U.S. dollars. Roughly nine in ten board directors of companies worldwide in professional services and media and entertainment industries say they expect an increase in the cybersecurity budget.

In 2023, organizations in the education and research sector saw the highest average weekly number of cyberattacks. The industry registered 2,046 cyberattacks, down from 2,314 in 2022. Government and military entities ranked second, with 1,598 weekly cyberattacks on average, while healthcare followed, with detected 1,500 incidents.

Between October 2021 and September 2022, malware was the most common type of cyber attack in financial and insurance organizations. The attack vector targeted around 40 percent of organizations worldwide. Network and application anomalies ranked second, with 23 percent of organizations experiencing such cyber attacks, while system anomalies followed, with 20 percent.

The healthcare industry is one of the most vulnerable sectors to cybercrime. Between October 2021 and September 2022, the organizations in this sector saw a variety of cyber attacks, a majority of them being network and application anomalies, around 63 percent. Malware was the second-most common type of attack vector, targeting 22 percent of the examined organizations.

Between November 2022 and October 2023, over 30 thousand cybercrime incidents were detected worldwide. Of this total, over 900 cases involved small companies. The organizations in the public administration sector were the most affected among the industries researched, with reported 12,217 cybercrime cases. The finance sector ranked second, while the professional sector followed, with over 2,500 incidents in each industry.

In 2023, around a quarter of detected cyberattacks worldwide targeted the manufacturing industry. This figure saw a notable increase between 2019 and 2020 when the share of manufacturing cyberattacks jumped from eight percent to nearly 18 percent.

Between late February and June 2022, over one quarter of cyber attacks by Russian state and state-affiliated groups on Ukraine targeted the government. Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and was reported to use cyber warfare against the country. The information technology (IT) sector was the second most targeted, making up 10 percent of the operations.

In 2022, around 80 percent of the manufacturing companies in the United States anticipated a cyber attack within the following year. Only a few years back, in 2018, this share stood at 64 percent. This development is partially connected to the growing number of cyber attacks in the manufacturing sector and companies' increasing awareness of cybercrime.

Between January 2022 and March 2023, the highest number of cyber attacks in the manufacturing industry was detected in May 2022, with 32 incidents. In December 2022, the sector saw four attacks, the lowest number of incidents in the measured period. In January 2023, this figure had an uptick, reaching 20 attacks.

In 2023, ransomware was the most frequently detected cyberattack worldwide, with around 70 percent of all detected cyberattacks. Network breaches ranked second, with almost 19 percent of the detections. Although less frequently, data exfiltration was also among the detected cyberattacks.

In 2023, the number of data compromises in the United States stood at 3,205 cases. Meanwhile, over 353 million individuals were affected in the same year by data compromises, including data breaches, leakage, and exposure. While these are three different events, they have one thing in common. As a result of all three incidents, the sensitive data is accessed by an unauthorized threat actor. Industries most vulnerable to data breaches Some industry sectors usually see more significant cases of private data violations than others. This is determined by the type and volume of the personal information organizations of these sectors store. In 2022, healthcare, financial services, and manufacturing were the three industry sectors that recorded most data breaches. The number of healthcare data breaches in the United States has gradually increased within the past few years. In the financial sector, data compromises increased almost twice between 2020 and 2022, while manufacturing saw an increase of more than three times in data compromise incidents. Largest data exposures worldwide In 2020, an adult streaming website, CAM4, experienced a leakage of nearly 11 billion records. This, by far, is the most extensive reported data leakage. This case, though, is unique because cyber security researchers found the vulnerability before the cyber criminals. The second-largest data breach is the Yahoo data breach, dating back to 2013. The company first reported about one billion exposed records, then later, in 2017, came up with an updated number of leaked records, which was three billion. In March 2018, the third biggest data breach happened, involving India’s national identification database Aadhaar. As a result of this incident, over 1.1 billion records were exposed.

In 2022, numerous significant cyber attacks were detected worldwide. The first significant cyber attack was on January 6th, when the attacker launched a new custom remote access trojan (RAT) that affected Windows, MacOS, and Linux systems. Before the Russia-Ukraine war started in late February, Russian state-sponsored threat groups targeted critical infrastructure in the United States. This was followed by a hack on the Belarussian railway. The end of January was marked by the attack of the German oil storage company being hit with ransomware. The tensions across industry sectors worldwide remained escalated throughout the whole time of the research. The year ended with ransomware attacks on hospital networks in France and Colombian energy company Empresas Públicas de Medellín (EPM).

In 2023, there were 3,348 reported cyber incidents in the financial industry worldwide, up from 1,829 in the preceding year. Coherently, the number of data breaches increased within the last two examined years, going from 690 in 2021 to 1,115 in 2023. Overall, 2023 saw the most significant number of cyber incidents since 2013.

The global indicator 'Estimated Cost of Cybercrime' in the cybersecurity market was forecast to continuously increase between 2024 and 2029 by in total 6.4 trillion U.S. dollars (+69.41 percent). After the eleventh consecutive increasing year, the indicator is estimated to reach 15.63 trillion U.S. dollars and therefore a new peak in 2029. Notably, the indicator 'Estimated Cost of Cybercrime' of the cybersecurity market was continuously increasing over the past years. Ransomware and manufacturing industry Cyberattacks remain a significant challenge for organizations worldwide, sectors such as manufacturing, finance, and insurance were the most affected by these attacks. Among the various types of cyber threats, ransomware was the most frequently detected, accounting for around 70 percent of all incidents. The manufacturing industry, in particular, faced the highest number of ransomware attacks, making it the most targeted sector globally. Cybersecurity awareness and investments Organizations worldwide became increasingly aware of the dangers posed by cyberattacks, approximately 40 percent of internet users became familiar terms such as with "ransomware." In response to these threats, companies invested more in cybersecurity. In 2024, the average annual increase in IT security budgets was expected to reach 5.7 percent. In fact, for companies worldwide, enhancing the cyber resilience of their cybersecurity teams was the top spending priority in 2023.

In a 2022 survey of security decision-makers of selected healthcare institutions in the United States, 54 percent of respondents stated that due to disruptive cybercrime events, they were unable to provide patient services. A further 48 percent said the cyberattack led to the theft of patient records.

In 2023, the healthcare industry in the United States remained the most targeted by cyber attacks, resulting in data compromises. Compared to 2022, the number of data compromise incidents in the U.S. healthcare industry increased more than twice. The financial services sector ranked second, with 744 data compromise incidents, representing a significant increase, too.

Between November 2022 and October 2023, over 10 thousand organizations worldwide experienced data breaches that included confirmed data loss. Among selected industries, firms in the education and healthcare sector saw the highest number of data violations. Regarding organization size, larger ones were victimized by data breaches more than smaller companies.

In 2022, the manufacturing industry saw nearly 60 percent of cyber incidents among Operational technology-related (OT) sectors. Among other OT industries, energy was targeted by 17 percent of the attacks, while water utilities saw around one percent of the global attacks for the year.

Technology and services were the industries with the highest share of cyber attacks in Spain, accounting for 32 of occurrences during January 2021 and August 2023. Meanwhile, the energy industry was Spain's strategic sector was the industry with the most cybersecurity incidents registered in Spain in 2022, with around 203 occurrences during this year, while the tax and financial systems ranked second, with 95 incidents registered in the same year.

In 2023, organizations all around the world detected 317.59 million ransomware attempts. Overall, this number decreased significantly between the third and fourth quarters of 2022, going from around 102 million to nearly 155 million cases, respectively. Ransomware attacks usually target organizations that collect large amounts of data and are critically important. In case of an attack, these organizations prefer paying the ransom to restore stolen data rather than to report the attack immediately. The incidents of data loss also damage companies’ reputation, which is one of the reasons why ransomware attacks are not reported. Most targeted industries and regions As a part of critical infrastructure, the manufacturing industry is usually targeted by ransomware attacks. In 2022, manufacturing organizations worldwide saw 437 such attacks. The food and beverage industry ranked second, with over 50 ransomware attacks. By the share of ransomware attacks on critical infrastructure, North America ranked first among other worldwide regions, followed by Europe. Healthcare and public health sector organizations filed the highest number of complaints to the U.S. law enforcement in 2022 about ransomware attacks. Ransomware as a service (RaaS) The Ransomware as a Service (RaaS) business model has existed for over a decade. The model involves hackers and affiliates. Hackers develop ransomware attack models and sell them to affiliates. The latter then use them independently to attack targets. According to the business model, the hacker who created the RaaS receives a service fee per collected ransom. In the first quarter of 2022, there were 31 Ransomware as a Service (RaaS) extortion groups worldwide, compared to the 19 such groups in the same quarter of 2021.