A survey conducted by the Internet Society’s Online Trust Alliance (ISOTA) and working for the American government has discovered that last year over 2 million cyber attacks were witnessed on government networks operating on a global note fetching a $45 billion loss.
ISOTA survey suggests that crypto jacking, phishing emails and hijacking of computer networks to generate bitcoins or other virtual currency was also rampant in the year 2018 along with the spread of ransomware.
The report suggests that most of the cyber attacks can be prevented by improving the computer security of companies, even though cyber crooks are seen launching sophisticated cyber attacks.
Security researchers found that as many as 6,800 computer breaches and over 5 billion records were exposed in the year 2018.
“As many attacks remain concealed from the world, the estimate might go high than reported”, says Jeff Wilbur, the technical director of the Alliance.
Jeff added that ransomware attacks alone witnessed an $8 billion loss and this includes attacks launched on Atlanta, Georgia, Baltimore, Maryland and other municipalities which incurred data loss and financial loss to rebuild their networks.
ISOTA survey suggests that the number of malware attacks reduced last year by 20%. But the financial impact rose by 60%.
Indian based UIDAI service named Aadhaar’s data leak of 1.1 billion records was termed to be the highest data breach of all times. Marriott/Starwood hotel chain which impacted over 383 people stood second in the data breaches line-up.
Installing threat monitoring software, keeping an eye on human errors, creating awareness among employees and training them according to the situation is the need of the hour say experts from the Internet Society’s Online Trust Alliance.
