Even as people are busy dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic, hackers seem to have a field day. The number of cyber attacks have doubled in the fourth quarter. “Covid-19-related cyber attack incidents increased by 240 per cent in the third quarter and by 114 per cent in the fourth quarter,” cyber security solutions company McAfee said, quoting the findings from the Threats Report: April 2021
Malware threats
While in the third quarter, McAfee Labs observed an average of 588 threats per minute, an increase of 40 per cent over the second quarter, by the fourth quarter this increased to 648, showing an increase of 10 per cent over the previous quarter.
Raj Samani, McAfee fellow and chief scientist, said that as the world in general and enterprises in particular are learning to adjust with the pandemic restrictions, security threats continued to evolve in complexity and increase in volume. “Though a large percentage of employees grew more proficient and productive in working remotely, enterprises endured more opportunistic COVID-19 related campaigns,” he said.
Ransomware and malware targeting vulnerabilities in work-related apps and processes are also active and remain dangerous threats capable of taking over networks and data, while costing millions in assets and recovery costs.