Governments are now top cyber targets

Government is at the top of the list for sectors that are most at risk of cyber attack, alongside finance.

Cyber attacks on the government sector doubled in 2016, while attacks on the finance sector also rose markedly.

This is according to the Executive’s Guide to the NTT Security 2017 Global Threat Intelligence Report, which was compiled from data collected by NTT Security and other NTT operating companies including Dimension Data.

The report pinpoints a number of global geo-political events which could have contributed to the government sector being a cybersecurity attack target. These include:

• the US presidential election campaign;
• a new US administration with a more aggressive stance toward China and North Korea;
• China adopting a more aggressive policy stance in securing its vital ‘core interests’;
• US and European Union-led economic sanctions against Russia;
• Russian state-sponsored actors continuing cyber operations against Western targets;
• growing negative sentiment in the Middle East against the West’s aggression towards Syria.

“Governments all over the world are constantly under the threat of sophisticated attacks launched by rival nation states, terrorist groups, hacktivists and cybercriminals,” Dimension Data Group Executive – Security Matthew Gyde said. 

“That’s because government agencies hold vast amounts of sensitive information — from personnel records, budgetary data and sensitive communications to intelligence findings. What’s interesting is that this year we saw numerous incidents involving insider threats.”

Commenting on the financial services industry, Dimension Data Asia Pacific General Manager – Security Neville Burdan said, “The ongoing attacks in the financial services industry are no surprise. These organisations have large amounts of digital assets and sensitive customer data. Gaining access to them enables cybercriminals to monetise personally identifiable information and credit card data in the underground economy.”

Other highlights in the report are:

• 63% of all cyber attacks originated from IP addresses in the US, followed by the UK (4%) and China 3%. The US is the predominant location of cloud-hosted infrastructure globally. Threat actors often utilise public cloud to orchestrate attacks due to the low cost and stability of this infrastructure.
• The Internet of Things (IoT) and operating technology (OT) devices must be considered as both a potential source and target of attack. Of the IoT attacks detected in 2016, some 66% were attempting to discover specific devices such as a particular model of video camera, 3% were seeking a web server or other type of server, while 2% were attempting to attack a database.
• The top cybersecurity threats facing digital businesses are phishing, social engineering and ransomware; business email compromise; IoT and distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks; and attacks targeting end users.

Image credit: ©duncanandison/Dollar Photo Club

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