According to Akamai, last year was a record-breaking year for API and application-based attacks against the EMEA retail sector, with a 189% surge in detected threats.
security vendor’s State of the Internet Portions of the report were compiled from information collected from 340,000 servers in 4,000 locations on 1,300 networks in 134 countries.
We also saw a significant spike in attacks across EMEA’s tech (176%) and social media (404%) sectors last year.
Globally, the financial services sector also saw an increase in attacks against its 2021 figures, but the UK saw a 4% drop in recorded threats, making it the only region in the sector to see a decline.
Akamai suggests that this may be due to attackers targeting individual account holders rather than large banking institutions.
said Richard Meeus, Director of Security Technologies and EMEA Strategy at Akamai.
“What is interesting is that while attacks on the UK financial sector have declined, attacks on private customers have increased. must be taught.
For more information on web attacks, financial services saw a 257% surge in attacks against web apps and APIs.
Retail, tech, and financial services will continue to be the most popular targets for web attacks in 2022, accounting for over 70% of all threats detected that year.
Elsewhere, attacks against the healthcare industry surged 55% globally from 2021 to 2022. Akamai claims this is due to the increased adoption of IoT devices, which has expanded the attack surface for organizations.
More generally, post-pandemic digital transformation has led organizations across industries to invest in more web applications and APIs, exposing them to cyber risk.
The report also found that local file inclusion (LFI) remains the top attack vector in EMEA, with a 115% increase in attacks from 2021 to 2022.
