According to Check Point statistics, the number of cyberattacks against Danish companies has risen by no less than 173 per cent compared to last year. By Morten Andersen

The digital transformation has picked up additional speed during the COVID-19 pandemic, but so has cyber-crime. Attacks on individuals, enterprises, organizations and even countries from state actors and organized criminal cyber networks have become significantly more frequent.

The Keynote session on Tuesday, 30 November at 3:15 - 14:00 Security, Safety and Stability – or not – Perspectives and Requirements at the Digital Tech Summit is devoted to cyber security, including a presentation by one of the world’s leading experts on cyber security, Vice President for Products at Check Point Software Technologies, Dr. Dorit Dor.  She is accompanied by keynote speaker Troels Ørting Jørgensen, Chairman of the Advisory Board, Centre for Cybersecurity World Economic Forum.

 

Ransomware-as-a-service
 

One increasing type of cyberattacks is ransomware. Since the first ransomware-attack on record, known as CryptoLocker, in 2013, software which holds a victim’s installation or content for ransom has evolved into an entire subfield of cybercrime.
While the creators of CryptoLocker would modestly ask for the equivalent of 300 USD, demands for millions of dollars are now seen. Several attacks are believed to be linked to foreign governments, and some suppliers even offer Ransomware-as-a-service.

WannaCry, NotPetya, Pay2Key and SUNBURST are notorious names of highly successful – from the viewpoint of the attacker – ransomware campaigns.
Strictly speaking, NotPetya was not ransomware since even if you paid the ransom your content could not be retrieved. So, it was really a wiper, a purely destructive attack. This gives reason to assume that the motivation behind NotPetya was not economic, but rather terror, and that possibly a government was involved. This is also the case for some of the other ransomware campaigns.

870 weekly attacks per company
 

Globally in 2021, 1 out of every 61 organizations are impacted by ransomware each week according to Check Point Research. This equals a 40 per cent rise in 2021 compared to 2020.

Curiously, the level of ransomware attacks dropped slightly following the introduction of COVID-19 lockdowns in many countries by March 2020. This proved to be silence before the storm, however. Soon, there was a significant increase in the average weekly number of attacks on each organization over the remaining months of 2021. In September 2021, the average weekly number of attacks on each organization globally reached its peak with over 870 attacks. This is more than double the number of attacks in March 2020.

Also, it’s worth noticing that the cyber criminals are not just targeting the Danish companies and organizations. A recent report from Check Point Software Technologies showed that the education sector is a target in focus. Actually, it is getting attacked more than any other industry or sector: In July 2021 the number of attacks against the education sector had risen by more than 9 per cent compared to 2020.

All these reports and statistics show that the cyber criminals are getting smarter and more sophisticated. That calls for action from both the Danish companies and the public sector, as they get more digitalized. They need to have better measurements in place to withstand the criminals who are trying to steal money and intellectual property every day. The first step is to understand the risk of cybercrime and for this to work throughout the whole organization – it needs to get an extended focus from the board of directors and upper management in every company.   

While cyberattacks are generally on the rise globally, a Danish 173 per cent increase from 2020 to 2021 is alarming by any standard. In comparison, attacks on Swedish, Norwegian, and Finnish companies rose by 131 per cent, 72 per cent and 96 per cent respectively during the same period. In other words, cyber criminals seem to have taken a special aim at Denmark.
 

Check Point is the world’s largest supplier of cyber security solutions for corporate enterprises and governments. Within the last 12 months, the cyber security corporation has assisted more than 10,000 private companies and public organizations which have been hit by cyberattacks.