A new report from Radware has revealed that organizations are increasingly targeted by nation-state hackers with 25 percent of respondents attributing attacks against their businesses to cyberwarefare or nation-state activity.
Back in 2018, just 19 percent of organizations believed they were attacked by a nation-state but that figure increased to 27 percent in 2019. Additionally companies in North America were more like to report nation-state attribution at 36 percent.
Chief marketing officer at Radware, Anna Convery-Pelletier provided further insight on the firm's 2019-2020 Global Application & Networking Security Report in a press release, saying:
- Austrian government hit by possible nation-state attack
- Average cost of cyberattack now exceeds $1.6 million
- IoT devices becoming an increasing security risk
“Nation-state intrusions are among the most difficult attacks to thwart because the agencies responsible often have significant resources, knowledge of potential zero-day exploits, and the patience to plan and execute operations. These attacks can result in the loss of sensitive trade, technological, or other data, and security teams may be at a distinct disadvantage.”
Increased attack surface
Radware's findings come at a time of heightened anxiety for security managers. As organizations adapt their network infrastructure to utilize microservices and multi-cloud environments, they also increase their attack surface while decreasing the overall visibility into their network traffic.
For example, 22 percent of those surveyed don't even know if they were attacked, 27 percent of those who were attacked don't know the hacker's motivations, 38 per cent are not sure whether an IoT botnet hit their networks and 46 percent are not sure if they suffered an encrypted DDoS attack.
Radware's report also found that 5G presents an important opportunity to build security into networks at their foundations but that only 26 percent of the carriers surveyed fell well prepared for 5G deployment while another 32 percent said that they were somewhat prepared.
5G will also help organizations derive value from IoT technologies but this also comes with a corresponding increase in attack surface. When it comes to IoT connected devices, 44 percent of respondents said malware propagation was their top concern followed by lack of visibility at 20 percent and Denial of Service at 20 percent.
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