RiskIQ, a global leader in attack surface management, has released its annual ‘Evil Internet Minute‘ report. The company tapped proprietary global intelligence and third-party research to analyse the volume of malicious activity on the Internet, revealing that cybercriminals cost the global economy £2.3 million every minute last year, a total of £1.2 trillion.
The data shows that in a single Internet minute, £2,300,000 is lost to cybercrime. Top companies pay £20 per minute due to security breaches.
Additional malicious activity includes:
- £1,550: the cost of hacks on cryptocurrency exchanges every minute
- £14,200: lost from phishing attacks per minute
- £17,817: the projected by-the-minute cost of global ransomware events in 2019
- £8,100: identifier records compromised every minute
- 7: malicious redirectors detected each minute
- 2.4 phishing sites stood up per minute
- 0.32: blacklisted apps by-the-minute
- 0.21: Magecart attacks detected every minute
“As the scale of the Internet continues to proliferate, so does the threat landscape,” said Lou Manousos, CEO of RiskIQ. “By compiling the vast numbers associated with cybercrime in the past year, we made the research more accessible by framing it in the context of an ‘Internet minute’.
“We are entering our third year defining the sheer scale of attacks that take place across the Internet using the latest third-party research and our own global threat intelligence so that businesses can better understand what they’re up against on the open web.”
Tactics range from malvertising to phishing to supply chain attacks that target e-commerce, like the Magecart hacks that have increased by 20 percent in the last year. The motives of cybercriminals include monetary gain, large-scale reputational damage, political motivations, and espionage.
“Without greater awareness and an increased effort to implement necessary security controls, there will be more attacks using an ever-expanding range of technologies and strategies,” Manousos said. “With the recent explosion of web and browser-based threats, organisations should look to what can happen in a matter of minutes and evaluate their current security strategy. Businesses must realise that they are vulnerable beyond the firewall, all the way across the open Internet.”
