Unit 42 has published its 2024 Incident Response Report, examining data from all the incidents in 2023 its threat teams responded to.
The data paints a concerning picture of escalating cyber threats, revealing a significant decrease in the time between compromise and data exfiltration. In fact, 45% of cases in 2023 saw attackers exfiltrate data in less than a day after compromise, with the median time dropping from 9 days in 2021 to just 2 in 2023.
Other key findings from the report include:
- The top industries targeted include: professional and legal services, high technology, manufacturing, healthcare, finance and, wholesale and retail. These accounted for 63% of cases in 2023.
- Ransomware remains a prevalent threat, with 33% of incidents involving malware linked to ransomware. The use of malware for data destruction has also increased 5x since 2022, posing new challenges for data security.
- Nearly 68% of attackers kept their ransom promises after they’ve been paid. However, 21% did not keep their promises.
- An increase in cloud incident responses, up from 6% in 2021, to 16.6% in 2023, signalling a growing threat landscape in cloud environments.
You can find the full report here.
