Global Cyberattack Statistics 2022: Check Point Report

Some stats your way

• The education/research (2,314), government (1,661), and healthcare (1,410) sectors accounted for the highest volume of cyberattacks per organization on a weekly basis.
• Africa faced the highest number of cyberattacks with 1,875 weekly attacks per organization, followed by Asia Pacific with 1,691 attacks.
• The U.K observed a 77% increase in overall cyberattacks, followed by the U.S. at 57% and Singapore at 26%.

Why this matters

• The ransomware ecosystem is evolving and growing with smaller, more agile criminal groups that form to evade law enforcement.
• Hackers are widening their aim to target business collaboration tools such as Slack, Teams, OneDrive, and Google Drive with phishing exploits, taking advantage of the increased use of these tools due to remote work.
• Academic institutions have become a popular target for cybercriminals due to the rapid digitization they underwent in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
• The healthcare sector is a lucrative target for hackers, who aim to retrieve health insurance information, medical record numbers, and sometimes even social security numbers.

AI-assisted cyberattacks

• In November 2022, OpenAI introduced ChatGPT which attracted significant attention and interest in the potential uses of AI. However, it also highlighted a new concern in the cybersecurity world, as it became clear that less skilled hackers can easily use code generation capabilities to launch cyberattacks.
• An examination of multiple prominent underground hacking groups reveals that there have been instances of cybercriminals utilizing OpenAI to create harmful tools.

The bottom line