Cyberattacks rise 32% in 2018 but detection remains low: F-Secure report

Cyberattacks rose by nearly a third globally in 2018 as compared to the previous year but the detection of such attacks remained low at the enterprise level, according to a report by cybersecurity solutions provider F-Secure.

The Finnish company said in a statement that nearly 15% of companies in India could not detect even a single attack in 2018 as compared to 22% globally.

F-Secure said that its network of decoy honeypots had registered an increase of 32% in the number of cyberattacks. Decoy honeypots are endpoints set up to lure hackers, trace their Internet Protocols or signatures, and gather what kind of evasion or deception tactic the perpetrators use to bypass firewalls or security.

F-Secure conducted a survey of 3,350 IT decision makers, influencers, and managers from 12 countries. According to a report that is based on the survey, F-Secure said that companies may not have the visibility they need to catch attacks that make it past preventative measures like firewalls and endpoint protection.

The survey found that 20% of the respondents had detected just a single attack during the 12-month period, while 31% detected two to five attacks.

“Today’s threats are completely different from 10 or even five years ago,” said Leszek Tasiemski, F-Secure's vice president of cybersecurity products research & development. “Preventive measures and strategies won’t stop everything anymore, so I have no doubt that many of the companies surveyed don’t have a full picture of what’s going on with their security.”

Tasiemski said that enterprises in the ICT (Information and Communications Technology) and finance segment detected more attacks globally while firms in the healthcare and manufacturing space recognised the least amount of attacks.

Other insights from the survey showed that Telnet was the most commonly targeted TCP (Transmission Control Port), which was likely the result of increasing numbers of compromised internet-of-things (IoT) devices searching for additional vulnerable devices.