2021 records ‘all-time peak’ in weekly cyber attacks
2021 sees huge increase in number of cyber-attacks on corporate networks
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From mid-2020 and throughout 2021 there has been an upwards trend in the number of cyber-attacks experienced by organizations.
According to research from Check Point Research (CPR), there was a 50 percent increase in overall attacks per week on corporate networks compared to 2020.
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In addition, in light of the Log4j vulnerability, which was uncovered in mid-December, Q4 of 2021 saw an all-time peak in weekly cyber-attacks per organization with CPR counting over 900 attacks per organization.
Industry breakdown
In its findings CPR broke down attacks by industry and acknowledged that education/research was the sector that experienced the highest volume of attacks, with an average of 1,605 attacks per organization every week.
This was a 75 percent increase from 2020. This was followed by the government/military sector, which had 1,136 attacks per week (47 percent increase), and the communications industry which had 1,079 attacks weekly per organization (51 percent increase).
Regional data
Africa experienced the highest volume of attacks in 2021, as can be seen in the visual below, with an average of 1,582 weekly attacks per organization. This represents a 13 percent increase from 2020.
This was followed by APAC, which has an average of 1,353 weekly attacks per organization (25 percent increase); Latin America, with 1,118 attacks weekly (38 percent increase); Europe, with 670 attacks weekly (68 percent increase); and North America, with an average of 503 weekly attacks per organization (61 percent increase).
