MORE than two critical cyber incidents occurred per day last year, according to a report released by a global cybersecurity and digital privacy firm.
In the latest Kaspersky Managed Detection and Response (MDR) Team Analyst Report, the frequency of high-severity incidents with direct human involvement exceeded two per day in 2023, a trend that was observed across all industries with financial, IT, government, and industrial sectors at the top of the list.
The report revealed that 22.9 percent of all detected high-severity incidents were recorded in the government sector, while IT companies came in second with 15.4 percent, which was closely followed by financial and industrial companies that reported 14.9 percent and 11.8 percent of incidents respectively.
Regarding the nature of these incidents, nearly 25 percent of them were driven by humans. Just over 20 percent involved various types of “cyber exercises,” which had been previously classified by Kaspersky as targeted attacks but designated as “cyber exercises” upon explicit confirmation by the customer.
The annual MDR report provides information about the reported incidents, their nature, and their distribution by industry and geographic region. It also highlights the most common tactics, techniques and tools attackers used in the past year. These results are based on analysis of MDR incidents detected by the Kaspersky Security Operations Center (SOC).
The report added that the percentage of malware attacks resulting in serious consequences dipped a bit last year compared to previous years, accounting for just over 12 percent of the total reported critical incidents. This decline, the report said, represents the smallest share of high-severity incidents in recent years and can be attributed to the “commoditization of attacks.”
The trend also reflects the widespread adoption of previously developed tools, originally designed for conducting targeted campaigns which, due to deliberate or accidental leaks, have become common. These tools are now being repurposed in attempts to implement fully automated attack scenarios.
The 2023 MDR’s report also found that the proportion of incidents involving the detection of targeted attack artefacts, publicly available critical vulnerabilities and the use of social engineering was around 4-5 percent.
“In 2023, Kaspersky detected a smaller number of high-severity incidents but observed a simultaneous increase in the number of medium- and low-severity ones. This redistribution of occurrences is associated with the detection of malware without visible traces of active human participation in attacks, which can be explained by the ‘commoditization of tools.’ However, it is important to understand that the low number of high-severity incidents does not necessarily indicate low damage. Targeted attacks are now planned more carefully, and become more dangerous. Therefore, we recommend the use of effective automated cybersecurity solutions managed with the help of experienced SOC analysts,” Sergey Soldatov, Head of Security Operations Center at Kaspersky, commented.
To enhance a company’s protection against advanced attacks, Kaspersky recommends the implementation of effective cybersecurity solutions and hire qualified practitioners to manage them or adopt managed security services such as Managed Detection and Response and Incident Response. These products cover the entire incident management cycle from threat identification to continuous protection and remediation. These services will help protect against evasive cyberattacks, investigate incidents and provide additional expertise even if a company lacks security workers.