70% of businesses targeted by BEC attacks

Majority of business leaders view ransomware as top concern as demands increase, accelerating cyber insurance adoption.

  • Tuesday, 21st May 2024 Posted 1 year ago in by Phil Alsop

Arctic Wolf has published findings from its annual State of Cybersecurity: 2024 Trends Report, based on a global survey the company commissioned from Sapio Research of over 1,000 senior IT and cybersecurity decision- makers from organizations in over fifteen different countries.

The State of Cybersecurity: 2024 Trends Report provides security executives and practitioners with insights into the current and future state of the cybersecurity landscape so they can help their organizations deliver positive security outcomes in an ever-evolving threat environment and remain on the forefront of cyber defense.

Key findings from the report include:

Business Email Compromise (BEC) Now Top Method of Attack: Almost three quarters (70%) of organizations were the targets of attempted BEC attacks in the last year, with almost a third (29%) of these targets becoming victims of one or more successful BEC occurrences.

Successful Data Exfiltration Dominates Rampant Ransomware Attacks: Nearly half (45%) of respondents claim their organization suffered a ransomware attack in the last 12 months, an increase from last year, with the majority (86%) of those attacks including successful data exfiltration.

Breach Disclosure Regulations Are Forcing Transparency: Two thirds (66%) of organizations that suffered a data breach in the last year chose to publicly disclose information regarding their incidents, while a third (30%) only disclosed their breaches to impacted parties.

Cyber Insurance Is the New Table Stakes in Risk Management: Cyber insurance demand and adoption is widespread, with an exceedingly small fraction (5%) of organizations deciding not to acquire coverage. Of the remaining organizations surveyed, the majority (66%) have an active cyber insurance policy, while a near additional third (29%) are in the process of obtaining or planning to obtain a policy this year.

With Rise of Generative AI, Usage Policies Are a Priority for Organizations: A staggering majority of organizations (94%) either currently have or plan to implement adoption and usage policies around generative AI and large language models (LLM) tools this year.

“This year’s insights highlight the increasing sophistication of threat actors and the realities of cyber incidents for organizations all around the world. Attackers are focusing on the human element, as evident with the overwhelming targeting via business email compromise. No matter the method of intrusion, the stakes are even higher for business leaders as most successful ransomware attacks involve data exfiltration,” said Ian McShane, vice president, Managed Detection and Response (MDR), Arctic Wolf. “While we are encouraged by the increased adoption of cyber insurance and incident response

readiness programs, it is clear that there is still work to be done to overcome perennial challenges for cybersecurity leaders, including the increased financial and productivity losses due to ransomware.”

Over 40% of agentic AI projects will be cancelled by the end of 2027, due to escalating costs, unclear business value or inadequate risk controls,...

AI use is outpacing policy and governance, ISACA finds

Posted 16 hours ago by Phil Alsop
The majority (83%) of IT and business professionals in Europe believe employees in their organisation are using AI.

AI and offshore outsourcing on the rise

Posted 19 hours ago by Phil Alsop
Whitelane Research, an independent organisation specialising in IT sourcing research across Europe, has released its 2025 IT Sourcing Study for the...
55% report cloud environments are more complex to secure than on-premises infrastructure.
As demand for data-driven insights increases, data overload could render UK businesses operationally ineffective.

AI use is outpacing policy and governance

Posted 5 days ago by Phil Alsop
The majority (83%) of IT and business professionals in Europe believe employees in their organisation are using AI.

Fierce competition in global AI leadership

Posted 5 days ago by Phil Alsop
More than four out of five of CEOs and IT executives surveyed are driving AI growth for their companies.
Distributor looks to the future and shares channel growth and transformation drivers as it celebrates its 40th birthday.