By Adam Sewall
Date: 1/21/2025
In 2024, cyber-attacks surged significantly, marking a banner year for hackers and foreign adversaries. The frequency and intensity of these attacks heightened across various sectors, including Critical Infrastructure, Enterprise, and SMEs.
Within Critical Infrastructure, attacks focused on Operational Technology (OT) and Industrial Control Systems (ICS), impacting vital sectors like power, water, transportation, and data services. Incidents such as the Volt Typhoon attacks and exploits targeting defense mechanisms’ vulnerabilities emphasized the necessity for a more comprehensive security approach.
In the Enterprise domain, cyber threats like business email compromise, phishing, ransomware, and malware remained prevalent as primary attack vectors. Additionally, social engineering, insider threats, third-party exposures, configuration errors, and artificial intelligence cyber threats saw a concerning increase.
Sophisticated attacks rapidly rose, with threat actors using targeted surveillance and mobile device exploits to infiltrate networks and compromise sensitive data. The emergence of new threat groups, such as FunkSec and SafePay, reported by ReliaQuest, highlighted the expanding threat landscape.
Organizations should embrace a Defense-in-Depth strategy to counter the escalating cyber threats, integrating advanced technologies like a sophisticated Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)/Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) system. Alongside a well-trained Security Operations Center (SOC) and integrated Incident Response (IR) teams leveraging telemetry and threat intelligence, this approach can mitigate a wide range of exploits proactively and reactively.
Without implementing such comprehensive security measures, government entities and enterprises remain vulnerable to increasing cyber-attacks and vulnerabilities. Stay tuned for our upcoming posts delving into the cost-effectiveness of prevention versus cleanup and Incident Response efforts. Remember, prevention is crucial in safeguarding against cyber threats.
Stay vigilant and stay safe out there.
Adam Sewall
CEO
Cyberleaf