Imperva has been publishing the Cyber Threat Index that includes analysis of the global cyber threat landscape across data and applications. It is based on data gathered from Imperva sensors all over the world. It is possible to see the types of most common attacks and vulnerability types amid COVID-19.
News traffic increases
When we look at the statistics about the increased web traffic in industries, the web traffic of news increased by 64%, food and beverages increased by 34%. In addition to this, in the third place, retail is standing with an increase of 28%.
According to Cyber Threat Index, the financial services industry has been in danger because it is targeted by cross-scripting site (XSS) attacks and a continued increase in attacks from cloud services. We see also the food and beverage industry experienced more website attacks globally (+6%), especially in Germany (+125%) during March.
The key points of the March report indicate that web usage augmented as COVID-19 spreads globally. The report also indicates that the United States and New Zealand both experienced spikes in attacks on government and law sectors. Additionally, India is the country with the highest number of spam attacks.
Nadav Avital, head of security research at Imperva, said,
Nadav Avital, head of security research, Imperva
“This new research from the Cyber Threat Index is a testament to the rapidly changing security landscape, and we can expect to see some of these threats, particularly attacks on government and law sectors continue to proliferate as we inch closer to the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
Government websites will only become an even bigger target for malicious actors, so organizations must prepare now before it’s too late. We’ll continue to monitor how this space evolves and provide recommendations for the right course of action.”
There was a 23% decline in attacks from anonymity frameworks such as TOR, VPNs, and masking proxies. The reason for this decline can be related to a 10% growth in attacks coming from different cloud services.
