And finally I have aggregated all the data collected in 2022 from the cyber attacks timelines. In the past year I have collected 3074 events, a 21% increase compared to the 2539 events collected over the course of 2021. The war in Ukraine had an impact in the cyberspace, but the effects were visible starting from the Spring and during the Summer until the end of the year.

Cyber crime continues to lead the Motivations chart with 76.8%, down from 84.1% of 2021. The impact of the war in Ukraine is visible in the percentage of Cyber Espionage, jumping at number two, exactly the same value of 2021 (10.4%), and even more in Hacktivism that soared to 7.1% from 1.3%. And obviously even the events motivated by Cyber Warfare doubled their percentage to 3.5% from 1.6% in 2021.

Malware continues to lead the Attack Techniques chart with 34.7%, apparently down from 39.4% of 2021. This apparent decrease is compensated by the growth of events with unknown origin (from 18.7% to 22.2%) and this has a clear explanation: in most cases  when a ransomware attack is experienced, the victim organization does not disclose clearly the reason of the attack, but mentions generically a network disruption that I track as “Unknown.” Phishing attacks moved Account Takeovers to 15.5% from 13% and the Targeted Attacks primarily against Ukraine, accounted for 8% from 6.3%, at expense of the exploitation of Vulnerabilities down to 7.8% from 10.7% during 2021. Finally, the operations carried out by the Hacktivists pushed the DDoS attacks to 3.8% from 1.7%.

Once again, multiple industries lead the Target Distribution chart with 22.3% from 20.7%. The Healthcare sector remains the preferred target of ransomware gangs, and this explains the second place, for two years in a row, with 12.5%, substantially in line with  11.9% recorded over the course of 2021. Governments jumped at number three with 11.8% from 10.4%.

The statistics are also available as an infographic, so enjoy the read and spread my work to raise awareness!