Average weekly cyberattacks highest in two years

The second quarter of this year saw the highest average number of cyberattacks per week in two years, according to a new Check Point Research report.

This April, May and June saw an 8% increase in weekly cyberattacks, with organisations facing an average in total of 1258 per week.

The education and research sector experienced the highest number of attacks, which averaged at 2179 attacks per organisation per week, with a 6% increase compared the Q2 last year.

The government and military sector was the second most attacked, averaging at 1772 attacks per week, and the healthcare sector followed with an average of 1744 per week.

Last week, US healthcare giant HCA healthcare saw 11 million patients’ data stolen, containing information used for email messages such as appointment reminders and education on healthcare programs and services.

The African continent saw the highest number of weekly attacks, increasing by 23%, but was closely followed by the APAC region which saw a 22% year-on-year increase in the average number of weekly attacks.

Check Point noted that while the Russian-Ukraine war’s impact on threat landscape has lessoned over the past few months, this landscape has in fact, reached a “new normal.”

This ‘new normal’ shows an increase in cyberattacks, with new evasive tactics, frequent hacktivism-based attacks, and ransomware attacks targeting organisations on a daily basis.

The cyber security firm advises keeping computers up-to-date and applying security patches often, alongside cyber awareness training, strengthening user authentication, keeping software updated, and choosing prevention over detection as well as anti-ransomware solutions.

Check Point says employees should be advised not to click on malicious links or attachments, avoid revealing personal or sensitive data to phishers, verify software legitimacy before downloading, and to never plug an unknown USB into a computer.

To find out what you can do to keep your business safe, read our 2022 Ransomware report here.