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 2024, ** percent of respondents indicated greater difficulty in attracting new customers as the main consequence of cyber attacks.

According to a 2024 survey of Chief Information Security Officers (CISO) worldwide, Ransomware attacks were a leading cybersecurity risk, with roughly ** percent naming it as one of the three major cybersecurity threats. A further share of ** percent of the respondents found malware to be a significant risk to their organizations' cybersecurity. Email fraud compromise and DDoS attacks followed closely, with ** percent.

As of September 2024, almost 30 percent of cyber incidents detected in the past 12 months were hacking incidents. A further 28.7 percent were incidents of misuse, and 15.2 percent of detections revealed malware attacks.

Introduction

Chinese Cyber Attack Statistics: Chinese cyber attacks have become a major global issue over the last 20 years. These attacks target governments, businesses, and important industries around the world. Many of these attacks are supported by the state, and their main goals are spying, stealing intellectual property, and gaining advantages in areas like technology, defence, and telecommunications.

In 2024, the global digital world will continue to face threats from cyberattacks linked to China. Because of this, governments and organisations need to strengthen their cybersecurity measures to protect their assets and data from these harmful activities.

In 2023, spending in the cybersecurity industry reached around 80 billion U.S. dollars, with forecasts suggesting that the market will eclipse 87 billion U.S. dollars by 2024. Global spending on cybersecurity has been increasing since 2021.

Cybersecurity remains a priority

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations worldwide have sent their employees into the home office for work. This decentralization of an organization’s IT landscape created new vulnerabilities of malicious actors to exploit which is concurred by IT professionals’ observation that there is an increase in cyber attacks following the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, cybersecurity remains a priority among business leaders to ensure operability of the company and data security.

Cybersecurity solutions

Among solutions for cybersecurity are endpoint security, identity access management, data security, and network security. These technologies are leveraged to protect sensitive information and critical systems from attacks. More specifically, these measures are designed to protect threats originating both from inside and outside an organization. This underscores the need to think of cybersecurity as a comprehensive strategy made up of practices and technologies.

Manufacturing remains among the most targeted industries by cyberattacks. Among the most significant attacks in this sector, in terms of monetary losses, was the 2023 Clorox attack, where the company lost around 356 million U.S. dollars due to decline in sales, based on lower production volumes due to the attack. Another big hack involved a business partner of semiconductor giant Applied Materials, which cost the company 250 million U.S. dollars.

Cloud Security Statistics: Cloud computing can bring many benefits to companies. However, they are also susceptible to being ruined because of the inability to ensure the proper security of information and privacy protections when using cloud computing. This in turn results in higher costs and potential losses to businesses. We will explore more details regarding Cloud Security Statistics in this report. Cloud adoption has risen dramatically over the last few years. Although many organizations were already in the cloud the COVID-19 outbreak has helped accelerate this transition. With the widespread use of remote work, organizations are required to provide support and essential services to their remote workforce. In the end, more than 90% of companies employ some form of cloud-based infrastructure. In addition, more than three-quarters (76 percent) are using multi-cloud deployments made up of at least two cloud service providers. These cloud environments host crucial applications for business and also protect sensitive customer and company information. With the shift to cloud computing comes an increased necessity to collect Cloud Security Statistics. Cloud-hosted applications need to be secured against attacks and cloud-hosted information must be secured against unauthorized access as per the applicable laws. Cloud environments are in a significant way from the on-prem infrastructure this means that the traditional security tools and methods don't always work when working in the cloud. In the end, many companies are confronted with major issues when it comes to securing their cloud-based infrastructure. Editor’s Choice 60% of global corporate data are stored on the cloud. 94% of businesses globally use one or more cloud computing services. It is estimated that the global Cloud Security Statistics market is projected to expand from $480 billion in 2022 to $2.297 trillion by 2032. With 32 percent, Amazon AWS owns the largest market share in cloud computing. 39% of businesses said they've been the victim of data breaches in their cloud environments. The amount of public money spent on cloud computing services is forecast to hit $597.3 billion by 2023. This will increase by 21.7 percent. 92% of companies have embraced a multi-cloud strategy. The market for cloud-based technology is predicted to reach $ 864 billion in 2025. It is expected to grow at an annual rate of 12.8 percent per year. Global storage of data will be greater than 200 Zettabytes of data by 2025. In 2025, more than 100 zettabytes of data are expected to remain in cloud storage. (Cloudwards) 89% of businesses have a multi-cloud strategy. (Flexera) 71 percent of Americans use cloud storage such as Dropbox as well as iCloud. (Statista) 48% of data from companies is stored in the cloud. (Panda Security) The market for cloud computing by 2020 is $371.4 billion. (Globe Newswire) Spending by end-users worldwide on public cloud services is expected to increase by 23.1 percent in 2021. (Gartner) With 83% of cloud users, security is the most frequent issue in cloud adoption. (Cloudwards) 52% of businesses want cloud-based solutions that include security tools. (Cloudwards)

The AI in Cybersecurity Market estimated size and share is projected to exceed USD 219.53 billion by 2034, with a forecasted CAGR of 24.1% during the period.

The number of professionals working in the cybersecurity industry was estimated to be over 1.3 million in Europe in 2024. The number of cybersecurity professionals globally stood at 5.46 million that year. Cybersecurity protects computer information systems, hardware, networks, and data from cyberattacks. As awareness of cyber threats is rising, so is the size of the global cybersecurity market. The cybersecurity workforce is growing fast, but demand is growing faster Cybersecurity workers have become some of the most in-demand members of today’s labor force with some specific roles being particularly difficult to fill, such as cloud security, security operations, or network security experts. In 2023, China was the country with the largest cybersecurity workforce gap, with a shortage of just over 1.7 million cybersecurity professionals. The wider context of tech layoffs The struggle faced by employers worldwide to recruit qualified and skilled professionals to fill cybersecurity roles runs counter to the recent mass layoffs in the technology sector. Although COVID-19 restrictions, which triggered the layoffs in 2020, loosened up in 2021, factors such as the Russia-Ukraine war, rising inflation, and concerns about an economic recession continue to have a significant impact on the tech industry.

In 2024, when asked about the most sought-after technical cybersecurity skills within their organization, 36 percent of respondents among hiring managers and nearly 50 percent among non-hiring managers highlighted cloud computing security. Artificial intelligence and machine learning ranked second among non-hiring managers, mentioned by 37 percent of respondents, while 28 percent of respondents among hiring managers mentioned security engineering.

During the first half of 2024, around 88 percent of cyberattacks carried out in Italy had cybercrime as a purpose. Cyber espionage was another motivation, representing the main reason behind roughly four percent of attacks. By contrast, information warfare only accounted for two percent of the cyberattacks in the country in the last examined period. Data breaches in Italy In 2023, over half of the Italian digital population was alerted that their personal data had been breached, and 77.5 percent of the alerted users had the misfortune of being affected by data compromise on the dark web. Despite a decrease in the number of data sets affected in data breaches between 2020 and 2023, Italy recorded almost one million exposed data sets at the beginning of 2023.Meanwhile, the average cost of data breaches for both Italian companies and targeted users kept growing, reaching 4.73 million U.S. dollars in 2024, up from the 3.86 million U.S. dollars recorded in the previous year. The Italian privacy landscape: GDPR effects As a state member of the European Union, Italy is covered by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Since 2018, the GDPR has regulated online data privacy and has the responsibility to represent consumers’ interests within the digital and tech landscape of the Union. As of 2023, approximately 265 fines were issued in Italy due to violations of the GDPR – making Italy the second country in Europe with the highest number of violations dispensed to tech companies. The highest GDPR fine ever issued in Italy was at the expense of Telecom Italia (TIM), one of the largest Italian telecommunications companies. TIM was fined approximately 27.8 million euros in January 2020. GDPR is enforced and helped by the country's Garante della Privacy, the national institution overseeing Italian users’ online rights, cybersecurity, and digital privacy.

Nearly every second Poland company recorded from one to three incidents related to security breaches in 2024, an increase compared to the previous year.

In a survey conducted in 2024, around 26 percent of respondents among business and cyber leaders worldwide stated that the biggest cybersecurity challenge they faced was vulnerabilities in complex supply chain interdependencies. Moreover, 22 percent were concerned about the increasing sophistication of cybercrime.

In 2024, the preferred cybersecurity solution to safeguard operational technology (OT) networks was network access control, highlighted by 64 percent of respondents, followed by internal network segmentation, selected by six out of 10 respondents. On the other hand, only 31 percent of OT professionals surveyed reported using threat intelligence as a cybersecurity solution.

A survey conducted in the United Kingdom (UK) between September 2023 and January 2024 revealed that 33 percent of businesses in the country used specific tools designed for security monitoring. Risk assessment covering cyber security risks was the case for 31 percent of the survey participant businesses, while 17 percent conducted a cyber security vulnerability audit.

In 2024, according to a survey on cyber security purchase demand data, services were the type of cyber security that had the largest amount of purchase planned, with a value of 385 billion South Korean won. Planned hard- and software purchases amounted to around 119 and 87.7 billion South Korean won respectively.

In 2024, when asked which security skills are the most important to their cybersecurity organizations' needs, 46 percent of respondents placed data protection in their top five required skills. Another skill listed by 30 percent of the respondents was data collection and correlation (SIEM, SOAR).

According to a survey conducted in Singapore between January and February 2024, 60 percent of surveyed organizations were at the formative stage of their cybersecurity readiness. In comparison, only one percent of companies were at the mature stage, and only seven percent of the organizations were at the beginner level.