Cybercriminals cost the global economy $454 billion last year. In a single evil internet minute, malicious activity costs international commerce $858,153 and victimizes 1,080 people, according to San Francisco based RiskIQ.
Despite businesses’ best efforts to guard against external cyberthreats, spending up to $142,6942 in 60 seconds, bad actors continue to proliferate online, revealed digital threat management firm RiskIQ, which examined the growing volume of malicious activity on the internet in the inaugural “Evil Internet Minute.”
What’s in an internet minute? According to data from RiskIQ and threat researchers around the world, there’s a lot of evil. As cybercrime grows in frequency, complexity, and consequence, the new digital strategies and initiatives employed by legitimate businesses to advance markets and propel themselves ahead of competitors are weaponized against them.
“As the internet and its community continue to grow at pace, researchers have been trying to make the vast numbers associated with it more accessible by framing them in the context of an internet minute,” Scott Gordon, chief marketing officer, RiskIQ, said. “As the same growth applies to cybercrime, we have framed malicious internet activity, leveraging the latest research as well as our own intelligence, to define the darker happenings across the web in that quick but impactful timeframe.”
Organizations’ digital assets are subject to malware, malvertising, and phishing efforts on a scale never seen, while rogue apps, domain and brand infringement, and social impersonation cause business disruption and material loss.
RiskIQ research noted cybercriminals continue to find success deploying tactics from 818 pieces of unique malware, 1,214 ransomware attacks, and more than 100,000 phishing emails in just one evil internet minute.
“As companies innovate web, social, and mobile means to engage with their customers, partners, and employees, threat actors will prey on business exposures and brands to capture users’ trust, access credentials, and sensitive data,” Gordon added. “This requires organizations to extend their security programs to monitor and mitigate threats outside the firewall.”
The threats are complex, with tactics ranging from malware to phishing, and intentions including monetary gain, inflicting large scale reputational damage, or just to entertain.
RiskIQ’s research also uncovered additional malicious activity, ranging from blacklisted mobile apps to malvertising:
- New blacklisted mobile apps: 0.3 per minute
- New phishing pages: 100 per minute
- Malvertising: 14.5 new malicious ads per minute
- Pirate content: 4,300 people globally exposed to malware from content theft sites per minute
Currently, an organization’s digital assets are subject to malware, malvertising, and phishing efforts on a scale never seen, while rogue apps, domain and brand infringement, and social impersonation cause business disruption and material loss.
“Every day, RiskIQ sees these threat actors and groups scaling up to amass enormous amounts of cheap, ever-evolving infrastructure to overwhelm defenses via large-scale attacks,” Mike Browning Manager, Content Strategy at RiskIQ, explained in a blog. Browning added, according to the 2017 Verizon Data Breach and Incident Report, more than 75% of the incidents that lead to data breaches originate externally, almost half of which target unknown—and thus unmanaged—digital assets.
“This new reality means organizations require new strategies and solutions to combat the mounting number of external threats that target businesses.”
