With the rise of technology, there has been a rise in cybersecurity concerns as well. Users across the globe are falling prey to online scams day after day and it has even got the authorities in action with them attempting to tackle this rise by introducing safeguards. On a global scale, total malware volume shot up by 30 per cent in the first half of 2024. In May alone the increase was recorded at 92 per cent. If we talk about just India then in the nation alone, malware attacks rose by 11 per cent and the ransomware cyberattacks jumped by 22 per cent in 2024.
Back in 2023, the volume for malware attacks stood at 12,13,528 and just within a year's time the statistic for the same now stands at 13,44,566 (11 per cent increase).
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2024 SonicWall Mid-Year Cyber Threat Report
According to a report titled 2024 SonicWall Mid-Year Cyber Threat Report, Internet of Things attacks (a type of cyber attack that targets the vulnerabilities of smart devices and applications connected to the internet) went up by 59 per cent in the last year from 10,57,320 in 2023 to 16,80,787 in 2024.
The report noted a 22 per cent increase in ransomware attacks, while India experienced a staggering 409 per cent rise in crypto attacks. “Organizations today confront a dynamic threat landscape where threat actors continually innovate to outpace enterprise defences,” said Debasish Mukherjee, Vice President of APJ Sales at SonicWall.
According to the report, cyber threats put at least 12.6 per cent of an organization’s annual revenues at risk, with businesses facing an average of 1,104 hours of critical attacks over 880 working hours. Cybersecurity measures were able to prevent what could have amounted to 46 days of downtime.
The report added that a total of 78,923 never-before-seen malware variants were also spotted in the first five months of 2024. It read, “The threat landscape remains complex, with over 500 strains of new variants discovered each day.”