Atlas VPN’s analysis shows that in the second quarter of 2021, social media attacks on payment services media jumped over 550%. Atlas VPN analyzed the data supplied by PhisLabs, where researchers analyzed hundreds of thousands of phishing and social media attacks targeting enterprises, their employees, and their brands.
Attacks by industry
Payment services are one of the most attacked industries. The most popular internet crimes were fraud, impersonation, cyber threats, and data leaks. In the second quarter of 2021, the attacks on payment services skyrocketed by 561.8%. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, attacks on healthcare companies increased by 187.8%.
Businesses in the broadcast media industry saw a massive attack with a steep surge of 112.5%. Finally, markets experiencing an upshift of attacks include cryptocurrency services and credit unions, where threats grew 13% and 4.9%, respectively. Overall, social media attacks targeting enterprises are up 47%.
In contrast, some industries experienced fewer attacks in Q2 than they did in Q1. Enterprises providing dating-related services (-52.3%), computer software (-49.2%), telecommunications (-23.5%), e-commerce (-19.7%), and banking (-10.2) all noticed a decline in the amount of threats.
Fraud is the most popular attack
Fraud is by far the most common type of internet crime, with 45.6%. Compared to Q1, fraud threats escalated by 23.7%. Brand and employee impersonations were the second most common threats encountered by businesses, making up 21.8% of all threats.