2018 Holiday Cyber Threat Data: Final Analysis Shows Big Ransomware Spikes in US, UK
It’s no secret that consumers flock to online retailers during the holiday shopping season between Thanksgiving and the New Year.
Last month, SonicWall provided deep cyber threat data for the nine-day window that included Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the U.S. Over this specific period, SonicWall Capture Labs threat researchers found that SonicWall customers faced 91 million malware attacks (34 percent decrease over 2017) and 889,933 ransomware attacks (432 percent increase over 2017).
But cyberattacks are hardly static. And they definitely don’t cease once Cyber Monday comes and goes. For this reason, SonicWall collected and analyzed threat data from the full December holiday shopping season to complement its Cyber Week threat analysis.
In the U.S., ransomware and phishing volume more than doubled compared to 2017, while malware was slightly down. In December alone, SonicWall Capture Labs threat researchers recorded:
- 2.7 million ransomware attacks (up 177 percent)
- 276.4 million malware attacks (down 27 percent from 2017)
- 797,607 phishing attacks (up 116 percent)
In the U.K., ransomware spiked four-fold while malware and phishing attacks were relatively flat. For December, SonicWall Capture Labs logged:
- 527,734 ransomware attacks (up 432 percent)
- 52.1 million malware attacks (down 2 percent from 2017
- 30,740 phishing attacks (no increase over 2017)
SonicWall will soon publish additional global December cyber threat data across all attack types, including encrypted threats, intrusion attempts and web application attacks.
Real-Time Threat Intelligence with SonicWall Capture Security Center
SonicWall cyber threat intelligence is available in the SonicWall Capture Security Center, which provides a graphical view of the worldwide attacks over the last 24 hours, countries being attacked and geographic attack origins.
The SonicWall Capture Security Center provides actionable cyber threat intelligence to help organizations identify the types of attacks they need to be concerned about so they can design and test their security posture ensure their networks, data, applications and customers are properly protected.
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SonicWall President and CEO Bill Conner and CTO John Gmuender walk you through the current cyber threat landscape, explore the importance of automated real-time breach detection and prevention, and address how to mitigate today’s most modern cyberattacks.
