Cryptomining impact on Organisations – Greed vs Loyalty

Although this article may seem to glorify a particular attribute of a particular report published by a particular company, this is not a sponsored feature.

Alarmingly, a 20% of companies globally are hit by Cryptomining attacks on weekly basis. And a whopping 33% of companies are hit by one or other kind of malware. While this is a hair-raising percentage, imagine how much it affects overall global GDP.

Cyber Security is always at the center-point of a company’s IT strategy. The recent report published by Check Point shares facts which definitely need a mindshare of companies. It highlights the main tactics cyber-criminals use in their 5^th generation attacks while targeting organizations worldwide across all industries, and gives cyber security professionals and C-Level executives the information they need to protect their organizations.

Key revelations being:

• Cryptominers dominated the malware landscape:  Cryptominers occupied the top four most prevalent malware types and impacted 37% of organizations globally in 2018. Despite a fall in the value of all cryptocurrencies, 20% of companies continue to be hit by cryptomining attacks every week.  Cryptominers have also highly evolved recently to exploit high profile vulnerabilities and to evade sandboxes and security products in order to expand their infection rates.

• Mobiles are a moving target:  33% of organizations worldwide were hit by mobile malware, with the leading three malware types targeting the Android OS. 2018 saw several cases where mobile malware was pre-installed on devices, and apps available from app stores that were actually malware in disguise

• Multi-purpose botnets launch range of attacks:  Bots were the third most common malware type, with 18% of organizations hit by bots which are used to launch DDoS attacks and spread other malware.  Bot infections were instrumental in nearly half (49%) of organizations experiencing a DDoS attack in 2018.

• Ransomware attacks in decline:  2018 saw ransomware usage fall sharply, impacting just 4% of organizations globally.