According to a survey conducted among IT security professionals worldwide, an increase in cyber attacks since the COVID-19 pandemic has been mostly seen in the area of data exfiltration and leakage. This includes unauthorized removal or transfer of data from a device, either by a perpetrator or malware. Phishing emails were also increasingly encountered by half of the respondents.

A 2022 survey of working adults and IT professionals worldwide revealed that bulk phishing attacks were the most common cyber incidents experienced by 85 percent of organizations in 2022. Spear phishing ranked second, with three in four respondents stating having encountered such incidents during the same year. Overall, between 2021 and 2022, there has been a decrease in the most common types of attacks.

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.

A 2024 survey among chief information security officers (CISO) in the United States showed that almost 9 in 10 organizations were at risk of a material cyberattack in the following 12 months. By comparison, the previous year's survey showed that 73 percent of information security leaders were concerned about their company experiencing a material cyberattack.

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.

Based on responses from IT security professionals across the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the rate of cybers-attacks but not as much as expected, with most organizations having made the switch to remote working. Nearly two thirds of company representatives surveyed stated that the number of attacks they experienced had either remained the same as before the pandemic, or increased slightly during this time.

Cyber attacks on businesses are becoming more frequent, targeted, and complex. The effects of a cyber attack go well beyond the direct financial consequences. In 2022, United Kingdom had the highest average cost of cyberattacks, at 24.2 thousand U.S. dollars.

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.

Some of the most important challenges when it came to responding to artificial intelligence cyber attacks were that not only human-driven response couldn't keep up but also hiring qualified employees to manage an AI attack was very difficult. At the same time, respondents complained that even their company's security tools were vulnerable in the face of AI driven cyber attacks.

In 2021, around 68 percent of survey respondents stated that artificial intelligence (AI) can to be used for impersonation and spear-phishing attacks against their companies in the future. AI is can also be used to enhance ransomware, which could become a real danger to companies' IT security.

In 2021, there were 630 cases of cyber attacks against private businesses recorded in South Korea. The number of cyber attacks against private businesses has continuously increased throughout the last years and has more than doubled compared to the 287 recorded attacks in 2017.

In 2021, Vietnam experienced a total number of over 9.7 thousand cyberattacks. Among them, malware was the most common type of cyber threat with nearly 5.8 thousand cases, followed by phishing and deface.

Between November 2022 and October 2023, the financial industry was the most targeted by basic web application attacks worldwide. Institutions in this sector saw 184 such incidents in the measured period. The second-most targeted was the information sector, with 144 attacks, while the professional sector ranked third, experiencing 127 incidents of basic web application attacks.

In fiscal year 2023, the total number of cyberattacks targeting government agencies in the United States was 32,211, up from 30,659 in the previous fiscal year. Furthermore, a significant part of the cyber incidents was against CFO Act agencies.

The highest share of cybercrime attacks was in the form of telnet attacks, amounting to 0.77 percent. A telnet attack is a widely adopted technique among criminal botnet operators, used to send a syn-flood attack against a target, using the telnet software running on thousands of compromised machines. At the same time, the share of attacks by cryptominers reached 0.14 percent.

Nearly half of respondents surveyed for this study stated that artificial intelligence (including machine learning) was the emerging technology that would best counter nation-state cyber attacks over the next five years. Other technologies that would be able to counter cyber threats in the future were: cloud computing, big-data analytics, quantum computing, and data centers.

In 2021, around 45 percent of healthcare organizations reported that they had experienced a phishing attack in the previous twelve months, making it by far the most common cyber security incident reported. A further share of 17 percent experienced ransomware attacks, while seven percent saw data breaches or leakage.

From 2021 to 2024, the share of financial institutions worldwide experiencing ransomware attacks has increased significantly. In 2024, roughly 65 percent of financial organizations worldwide reported experiencing a ransomware attack, compared to 64 percent in 2023 and 34 percent in 2021.

In the second half of 2021, Latin America presented a significantly higher rate of cyber attacks than the global average. While the rate of attacks from mobile browsers exceeded three percent, the average worldwide was 2.4 percent. Furthermore, the region also recorded the highest cyber attack rate from desktops, surpassing a four percent rate against an average of 1.8 percent worldwide.

A 2024 survey among Chief Information Security Officers (CISO) worldwide showed that seven in ten organizations worldwide were at risk of a material cyberattack in the following 12 months. This figure has increased by two percent compared to the prior year. As of 2024, companies in the South Korea were at the highest risk of a cyberattack, according to 91 percent of the surveyed Chief Information Security Officers (CISO) from various industries in the country.