Carbon Black, a Massachusetts based Cybersecurity company has discovered that a new technique of cyber attack known as “Island Hopping” is increasingly becoming popular in the cyber world where cybercriminals infiltrate into large-sized company networks by targeting their clients or partners.
Technically speaking, networks between two companies are targeted first after which hackers take advantage of compromising the digital assets of a big company.
Usually, HR Companies, tax consulting firms, marketing firms are allegedly targeted in such attacks which saw a 50% increase last year.
Carbon Black’s Quarterly Incident Threat Report states that in the 1st quarter of this year 42% of financial firms, 32% of retailers and 32% of manufacturers were targeted by Island Hopping attack.
“At this point, Island Hopping has become a part and parcel of a Cybercrime conspiracy,” says Tom Kellerman, the Chief Technology Officer of Carbon Black. He added that bad actors are using a victim’s brand name and reputation against customers and partners of a company by invading a house, setting up their hub there and then invading other neighboring houses.
Endpoint Cloud Security Services provider ‘Carbon Black’ has also stated in its other survey that healthcare organizations were immensely targeted in 2019 and Personal Health Information(PHI) was massively stolen by cybercriminals.
Among the respondents who were surveyed on Healthcare industry by the researchers of Carbon Black, 83% of them stated that they’ve have seen an increase in cyber attacks on the digital assets of the healthcare industry over the past year and over 66% among them admitted that the attacks witnessed this year were much sophisticated.
