The good news is that the global average time a hacker lurks in a target’s environment before being detected has come down to 21 days in 2021 from 24 days in 2020.

The reduction in the‘median dwell time’ is still higher in the Asia-Pacific region. It fell to 21 days in 2021 from 76 days in 2020. Interestingly, the median dwell time stayed steady at 17 days in the Americas, according to Mandiant M-Trends 2022.

The annual report published by Mandiant, a US-based cybersecurity solutions company tracked metrics between October 1, 2020 and December 31, 2021.

The bad news, however, is that the threat landscape continues to witness a spurt in malware families.

“While significant progress has been made in threat detection and response, we continue to see adversaries innovate and adapt to achieve their mission in targeted environments,” the report observed.

The report found that in EMEA (Europe, Middle-East and Africa) and APAC regions, the majority of intrusions in 2021 were detected by external third parties.

New threats emerge

Mandiant said its experts tracked over 1,100 new threat groups during the period. They also tracked 733 new malware families.

The report claimed that there is a ‘realignment and retooling’ of China.

It asked the organisations to prioritise which security measures to implement based on the likelihood of specific techniques being used during an intrusion.

Top targets

It said that business and professional services and financial were the top two industries targeted by hackers most. Healthcare, retail, hospitality and government are also among the top targets.

“There was a noticeable drop in phishing this year, reflecting organisations’ improved awareness and ability to better detect and block these attempts,” Jurgen Kutscher, Executive Vice-President (Service Delivery) of Mandiant, has said.

“Multifaceted extortion and ransomware continue to pose huge challenges for organisations of all sizes and across all industries,” the report said.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW