Homepage Arctic Wolf newsroom
Register as BUSINESS Register as PR AGENCY Register as JOURNALIST

Arctic Wolf 2024 trends report reveals 70% of businesses targeted by Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks

Announcement posted by Arctic Wolf 22 May 2024

Majority of business leaders view ransomware as top concern as demands increase, accelerating cyber insurance adoption

SYDNEY, Australia - 22 May 2024 - Arctic Wolf, a global leader in security operations, today published findings from its annual State of Cybersecurity: 2024 Trends Report, based on a global survey the company commissioned from Sapio Research of over 1,000 senior IT and cybersecurity decision-makers from over fifteen different countries.
 

The State of Cybersecurity: 2024 Trends Report provides security executives and practitioners with insights into the current and future state of the cybersecurity landscape so they can help their organisations deliver positive security outcomes in an ever-evolving threat environment and remain on the forefront of cyber defence.
 

Key findings from the report include:
 

  • Business Email Compromise (BEC) now top method of attack: Almost three quarters (70%) of organisations were the targets of attempted BEC attacks in the last year, with almost a third (29%) of these targets becoming victims of one or more successful BEC occurrences.
  • Successful data exfiltration dominates rampant ransomware attacks: Nearly half (45%) of respondents claim their organisations suffered a ransomware attack in the last 12 months, an increase from last year, with the majority (86%) of those attacks including successful data exfiltration.
  • Breach disclosure regulations are forcing transparency: Two thirds (66%) of organisations that suffered a data breach in the last year chose to publicly disclose information regarding their incidents, while a third (30%) only disclosed their breaches to impacted parties.
  • Cyber insurance is the new table stakes in risk management: Cyber insurance demand and adoption is widespread, with an exceedingly small fraction (5%) of organisations deciding not to acquire coverage. Of the remaining organisations surveyed, the majority (66%) have an active cyber insurance policy, while a near additional third (29%) are in the process of obtaining or planning to obtain a policy this year.
  • With rise of generative AI, usage policies are a priority for organisations: A staggering majority of organisations (94%) either currently have or plan to implement adoption and usage policies around generative AI and large language models (LLM) tools this year.

"This year's insights highlight the increasing sophistication of threat actors and the realities of cyber incidents for organisations all around the world. Attackers are focusing on the human element, as evident with the overwhelming targeting via business email compromise. No matter the method of intrusion, the stakes are even higher for business leaders as most successful ransomware attacks involve data exfiltration," said Ian McShane, Vice President, Managed Detection and Response (MDR), Arctic Wolf. "While we are encouraged by the increased adoption of cyber insurance and incident response readiness programs, it is clear that there is still work to be done to overcome perennial challenges for cybersecurity leaders, including the increased financial and productivity losses due to ransomware."
 

For additional insights from Arctic Wolf's State of Cybersecurity: 2024 Trends Report, visit arcticwolf.com to download the full report and register for the webinar by region below:

Additional Resources:

 

About Arctic Wolf:
Arctic Wolf is a global leader in security operations, enabling customers to manage their cyber risk in the face of modern cyber-attacks via a premier cloud-native security operations platform. The Arctic Wolf Security Operations Cloud ingests and analyses more than 5.2 trillion security events a week to help enable cyber defence at an unprecedented capacity and scale, empowering customers of virtually any size across a wide range of industries to feel confident in their security posture, readiness, and long-term resilience. By delivering automated threat protection, response, and remediation capabilities, Arctic Wolf delivers world-class security operations with the push of a button so customers can defend their greatest assets at the speed of data.


Media Contact:
Espresso Communications
Olivia Hammond
arcticwolf@espressocomms.com.au