Information technology, education, and research sectors are the most prone to cyberattacks in 2024, according to a report by Microsoft.
The findings are contained in the recently released 2024 Digital Defense Report, which highlights an alarming rise in attacks across the globe.
It shows the number of global cyber-attacks has doubled to 600 million per day. Data breaches have also been rampant, with the report indicating there were more than a billion stolen records so far in 2024.
These breaches have not only compromised personal information but also emboldened criminals who profit from cyberattacks.
“In 2024, education and research became the second most targeted sector by nation-state threat actors,” the report reads.
“In addition to offering intelligence such as research and policy discussions, education and research institutions are often used as testing grounds by threat actors before they pursue their actual targets”.
According to the report, other sectors most prone to attacks include think tanks and NGOs, transportation, consumer retail, finance, manufacturing, and communications.
The report is coming just a week after the Communications Authority of Kenya’s Sector Statistics Report that almost similar sectors are most targeted in the country.
According to the report, there was a substantial increase in the number of attacks targeting Kenyan firms, underscoring the rising risks in the country’s cyber security landscape.
CA attributes the surge to a number of system vulnerability threats, which jumped from 871.2 million to 1.2 billion recorded during the second quarter of the year.
“The total cyber threats detected rose by 16.5 per cent from 971.4 million reported in the previous quarter to 1.1 billion recorded in the quarter under reference,” CA said.
It however reveals reduced malware, brute force attacks, web application, and mobile application attacks during the period under review.
Malware threats reduced from 33.2 million at the end of March 2024 to 31.9 million in June 2024.Brute force attacks also declined, from 28 million to 26.9 million in the same period, while other detected online risks, including distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, dropped from 38.64 million recorded from January to March 2024 to 7.33 million in June.
Additionally, web application attacks reduced from 199,435 to 146,903 during the review period.
The report further noted a surge in the number of total cyber advisories issued by the CA, which grew to 9.35 million, up from 8.52 million in the review period.
In Africa, the African Cyberthreat Assessment Report 2024 by Interpol highlights the rapid growth of cybercrime, with estimates showing that in 2023, there was a 23 per cent year-on-year increase in the average number of weekly cyberattacks per organization in Africa, the highest average in the world.
Recent cyber threats have markedly increased in sophistication and frequency, posing significant challenges to cybersecurity defences worldwide.
A notable trend is the
surge in mobile, Internet of Things
(IoT), and operational technology
(OT) cyberattacks, which underscores the expanding threat landscape beyond traditional computing
environments.