Security News > 2021 > April > Financial Sector Remains Most Targeted by Threat Actors: IBM
Organizations in the financial and insurance sectors were the most targeted by threat actors in 2020, continuing a trend that was first observed roughly five years ago, IBM Security reports.
Retail and professional services rounded up the top five most targeted sectors, IBM says.
In the latest installment of their annual X-Force Threat Intelligence Index, IBM Security also reveals that ransomware was the most popular attack method in 2020, with a market share of roughly 23%. "Threat actors carried out ransomware attacks predominantly by gaining access to victim environments via remote desktop protocol, credential theft, or phishing-attack vectors that have been similarly exploited to install ransomware in prior years," IBM explains.
Data theft attacks, IBM says, went up 160% compared to 2019, but accounted for only 13% of the overall incidents in 2020.
Last year, vulnerability scanning and exploitation was the top attack vector, being employed in 35% of all incidents that IBM observed.
Europe accounted for 31% of the observed attacks, up 10% percentage points from 2019, with ransomware being the most common threat, at 21% of all attacks.