To the cyber-criminal, the world is a list of digital targets. There are two primary methods for selecting those targets. Sometimes the adversaries cast a very large automated digital net, looking for easily exploitable weaknesses wherever they exist. When the system reports one, they decide if the target is worth their time and either pursue it or move on to the next.
The other is a far more dangerous method, in which the target is pre-selected because it is considered high-value. When hackers decided to go after Target Stores in 2013 the attack was complex, methodical, and persistent; eventually compromising over 40 million people’s card data and costing the company over $300 million.
JP Morgan Chase suffered a breach in 2014 in which they reportedly compromised the financial and personal information of more than 76 million households and 7 million small businesses. The total cost of that incident is estimated to reach $1 billion!
According to the IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index of 2019, Finance and Insurance was the most frequently targeted industry in 2018 with 19% of the tracked attacks.
(more…)