Perception Point observed a 356% increase in the number of advanced phishing attacks attempted by threat actors in 2022.
According to the company, 2023 Annual Report: Cybersecurity Trends and Insights According to the report, the total number of attacks increased by 87%.
One of the reasons behind this increase is the fact that malicious actors continue to gain widespread access to new tools such as those powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).
They automate the process of generating sophisticated attacks, including attacks featuring social engineering and evasion techniques.
For more information on similar attacks, see ChatGPT creates polymorphic malware.
“As the global threat landscape continues to evolve, I am pleased to present important data showing an exponential increase in the number of attacks combined with increasingly sophisticated attack techniques aimed at infiltrating and damaging organizations. We share,” said Yoram Salinger, CEO of Perception Point.
Additionally, the report highlighted the changing threat landscape with the rapid adoption of new cloud collaboration apps, cloud storage, and productivity services for external collaboration.
Threat actors have adapted to this shift, with attacks against cloud storage and collaboration apps jumping 161% in 2022, but email and browsers remained the primary attack vectors.
Overall, phishing was the most prevalent threat, accounting for 67.4% of all attacks. Business email compromise (BEC) attacks also saw a significant increase last year, up 83%. Microsoft was the most impersonated brand in malicious emails and 3.3 times more than LinkedIn, the next most copied brand.
Phone fraud attacks also increased significantly (363%).
When looking at specific channels, we saw a significant increase in the percentage of advanced attacks. For example, advanced attacks account for 31.9% of threats to file storage tools and 56.9% of threats to Amazon S3 buckets.
Advanced attacks represent just 2% of all threats, but they are complex and can cause significant damage to organizations, says Perception Point.
“This report underscores the need for organizations to be vigilant to protect their employees from modern threats across multiple business and collaboration channels,” Salinger added, adding, “If necessary, replace traditional security systems with are enhanced or replaced with effective preventive and rapid remediation services.”
