GEC NEWS WIRETrend Micro released its annual security roundup report, “2016 Security Roundup: A Record Year for Enterprise Threats,” which proves 2016 was truly the year of online extortion. Cyber threats reached an all-time high in 2016, with ransomware and Business Email Compromise scams gaining increased popularity among cybercriminals looking to extort enterprises. A 752% increase in new ransomware families ultimately resulted in $1 billion in losses for enterprises worldwide.
Trend Micro and the Zero Day Initiative discovered 765 vulnerabilities in 2016. Of these, 678 were brought to ZDI through their bug bounty program, then ZDI verifies and discloses the issue to the affected vendor. Compared to vulnerabilities discovered by Trend Micro and ZDI in 2015, Apple saw a 145 percent increase in vulnerabilities, while Microsoft bugs decreased by 47 percent. Additionally, the use of new vulnerabilities in exploit kits dropped by 71 percent, which is partially due to the arrest of the threat actors behind Angler that took place in June 2016.
“As threats, have diversified and grown in sophistication, cybercriminals have moved on from primarily targeting individuals to focusing on where the money is: enterprises,” said Ed Cabrera, chief cybersecurity officer for Trend Micro.
In 2016, the Trend Micro Smart Protection Network blocked more than 81 billion threats for the entire year, which is a 56 percent increase from 2015. In the second half of 2016, more than 3,000 attacks per second were blocked for customers. During this time, 75 billion of blocked attempts were email based, illustrating that email remains the top entry point for threats.
