R
arely a day goes by
without a headline for
a major cyber-attack
against a business,
hospital, school, or
government agency. Dealing with data
breaches, ransomware, distributed
denial of service (DDoS) attacks, and
a multitude of other cyber threats has
simply become a part of doing busi-
ness for most organizations.
Despite the grim outlook, there
is also a great deal of research being
done on various cyber crime trends to
help keep cybersecurity professionals
well-informed on the threat landscape.
NTT Security's recently published
2017 Global reat Intelligence Report
provides a wealth of data points on
cyber threats and how hackers con-
tinue to vary tactics. Highlights of the
report's findings include:
• Phishing attacks were respon-
sible for as much as 73 percent
of malware being delivered to
organizations.
• 77 percent of all detected ransom-
ware was in four industries – busi-
ness and professional services (28
percent), government (19 percent),
healthcare (15 percent) and retail
(15 percent).
• 25 passwords accounted for nearly
33 percent of all authentication
attempts against NTT Security Hon-
eypots – systems built as lures to
attract attackers and gather informa-
tion on their methods.
• Global DDoS attacks accounted for
less than 6 percent of all attacks;
however, they accounted for more
than 16 percent of all attacks from
Asia and 23 percent from Australia.
e report analyzes trends by spe-
cific geographic regions. Within the
Americas, for example, aer the U.S.
(54 percent), China (17 percent) was
responsible for more attacks against
the company's clients in the region
than any other source country.
e three industries most frequently
targeted in the Americas were manu-
facturing (23 percent), education (20
percent), and finance (15 percent).
Rob Kraus, director of security
research and strategy for NTT Secu-
New Study
Outlines Top
Cybersecurity
Threat Vectors
Business email compromise,
ransomware awareness and other
trends highlight NTT Security's
'Global Threat Intelligence Report'
By Joel Griffin
According to NTT Security's 2017
Global Threat Intelligence Report,
business email compromise
attacks were the second most
common form of phishing attacks
that the company's incident
response engagement teams
encountered in 2016, just behind
ransomware.
28 Security Dealer & Integrator / www.SecurityInfoWatch.com June 2017