SonicWall today released the 2022 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report. The bi-annual report details a sustained unprecedented rise in ransomware with 623.3 million attacks globally. Nearly, all monitored threats, cyberattacks and malicious digital assaults rose in 2021 including: ransomware, encrypted threats, IoT malware and cryptojacking.
“Cyberattacks become more attractive and potentially more disastrous as dependence on information technology increases,” said SonicWall President and CEO Bill Conner. “Securing information in a boundless world is a near impossible and thankless job, especially as the boundaries of organizations are ever-expanding to limitless endpoints and networks,” said Debasish Mukherjee, Vice President, Regional Sales-APAC at SonicWall.
“With threats of almost every type on the rise, is it imperative that we have strategies and resilience systems in place to respond almost instantaneously. Especially in Asia Pacific where many have been the target of these malicious attacks in a new paradigm for cybercrime, all the more our findings in the 2022 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report will help us to find the right security measures to protect our greatest assets and be a step ahead to prevent unwanted and damaging attacks,” Mukherjee adds.
SonicWall Capture Labs threat researchers tracked the dramatic rise in ransomware, recording an astounding 318.6 million more ransomware attacks than 2020, a 105% increase. Ransomware volume has risen 232% since 2019.
High-profile ransomware attacks impacted businesses, state and federal governments, schools, hospitals and even individuals. Attacks hit supply chains, causing widespread system downtime, economic loss and reputational damage. Following global trends, all industries faced large increases of ransomware volume, including government (+1,885%), healthcare (755%), education (152%) and retail (21%).
The frequency and variety of cyberattacks continue to expand every year, with an increasing cost to organizations worldwide. SMBs and enterprises are progressively threatened by an assortment of cyberattacks, and without knowing what they are, or how cybercriminals operate, protecting business-critical data from cyberattacks becomes unmanageable.
“Attacks on networks rose to a feverish pitch in 2021,” said SonicWall Vice President of Platform Architecture Dmitriy Ayrapetov. “Ransomware, cryptojacking, vulnerably exploitation, phishing and other attacks continue to plague organizations around the world and overwhelm security teams. It’s important to understand the breakdown of these attacks and why they continue to be successful, as well as the drivers and trends behind them.”
SonicWall’s Real-Time Deep Memory Inspection (RTDMI) technology identified a total of 442,151 never-before-seen malware variants in 2021, a 65% year-over-year increase and an average of 1,211 per day. In Q4, RTDMI found more never-before-seen malware variants than in any quarter since its introduction in 2018.
