Criminals Want Cash? An Astounding Insight for Whom Exactly?

June 15, 2020

Why is it so hard for some people to understand a concept? Cyber criminals break laws not because it is fun (some might get a kick out of it), but to steal money. The old adage “money makes the world go around” is the goal for cyber criminals, because with money they can live their desired lifestyle. Security Brief delves into a report about cyber criminal activities in: “Cybercriminals After Money More Than Anything Else-Verizon Report.

Security Brief read the Verizon Business 2020 Data Breach Investigations Report, where there 32,000 breaches were analyzed. Of that 3950 were from eighty-one countries and 86% of the breaches were related money. When broken down by continents, 91% were in North America, 70% in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, and 63% in Asia.

Most financially related organizations are taking precautions to protect their clients and fewer than one in twenty breaches exploit vulnerabilities. Other types of crumbier crime include:

“Other common cyber attacks include web application attacks, as threat actors go after cloud-based data. According to the report, more than 20% of attacks were against web application and used stolen credentials in some way. The report notes that the trend is worrying as more organizations shift business-critical workloads to the cloud.

Credential theft, phishing, business email compromise and other social engineering attacks caused more than 67% of breaches. Specifically, 37% of credential theft breaches used stolen or weak credentials, 25% involved phishing, and 22% involved human error.

Amongst malware incidents, ransomware was involved in 27% of cases, and 18% of organizations blocked at least one piece of ransomware in the last year.”

The article recommends businesses and users education themselves about common cyber crime attacks to prevent breaches. It is also a good idea to have a decent cyber security system that is regularly updated. Most breaches in North America involved stolen credentials, phishing/pretexting.

Money motivates cyber criminals? Why does that even need to be stated?

Whitney Grace, June 15, 2020

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