Cybersecurity is a "global emergency" which has "profound impacts on every aspect of society and geopolitics" and estimated economic damage "equal to over 6% of world GDP".
This is the alarm cry contained in the Clusit Report relating to the first half of 2021, referring to the world situation. There were 24% more severe attacks, those with "very critical or devastating" effects went from 49% to 74%. For Italy "we hope that the PNRR will be an opportunity to catch up and fill its gaps also in the cyber field", says Andrea Zapparoli Manzoni, co-author of the Report.
The Clusit Report, the Italian Association for IT Security, also includes the analysis of attacks in Italy, carried out by Fastweb: it recorded 36 million malicious events in the half-year considered, an increase of 180% compared to the same period of 2020 Worldwide, according to the researchers, in the first half of 2021 the serious attacks carried out for Cybercrime purposes, that is to extort money, increased by 21% (they represent 88% of the total).
On the other hand, those classified as Cyber Espionage activities decreased (-36.7%), after the extraordinary peak of 2020 mainly due to espionage related to the development of vaccines and treatments for Covid-19.
Among the attack techniques, 'malware' shows the highest numbers: it represents 43% of the total, up 10.5%.
Followed by the unknown techniques ("Unknown" category), up 13.9% on the second half of 2020; Serious attacks conducted with "multiple techniques" increased by 11.6%. In percentage terms, the most affected category is 'Government' which represents 16% of the total; Healthcare still ranks second with 13% of total attacks, and in third place 'Multiple Targets', which in this semester represents 12% of victims.
The latter recorded a decrease because, explains Clusit, "we are facing a change of strategy on the part of the attackers" who favor "serious attacks aimed at single targets" with ransomware-type techniques aggravated by 'double extortion', ie threatens to spread the stolen data to victims if they fail to pay the ransom.
Regarding the geographic distribution of attacks, in the first half of 2021 those towards European-based realities increased by 10%, while the percentages of victims in the American and Asian areas remain unchanged.
