According to the mid-year update to the 2022 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report, in the first six months of 2022, IoT malware globally was up 77%, resulting in a total of 57 million attacks. This attack volume is higher than 2018, 2019 or 2020 recorded for the entire year, and already 95% of the full-year total for 2021!
The geographic distribution of this growth is rather diverse: IoT malware growth skyrocketed in North-America with 222% YoY increase, Asia’s 74% increase was slightly better than the global average, and in Europe IoT malware attacks actually decreased by 19%. 59% of all IoT malware attacks happened in North America, up from a 33% share during the first half of 2021.
When it comes to industry-specific figures, every industry analyzed showed triple-digit attack volume increases: finance up 151%, followed by healthcare (up 123%), retail (up 122%), government (up 114%) and education (up 110%). But surprisingly, the percentage of customers targeted in the first half of 2022 actually fell compared with the first half of 2021, e.g. in education, from 11.33% H1 2021 to 8.91% in H1 2022.
With these record-setting figures, it comes as no surprise that the 2022 SonicWall Threat Mindset Survey found that 66% of SonicWall customers are more concerned about cyberattacks in their organizations in 2022 than in previous years. 89% of respondents named financially motivated threats like ransomware as their top concern. While cybersecurity budgets are growing, 41% of respondents still find these budgets inadequate to face the growing threats.
You can access the mid-year update to the 2022 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report at https://www.sonicwall.com/2022-cyber-threat-report/ and the 2022 SonicWall Threat Mindset Survey at https://www.sonicwall.com/resources/white-papers/2022-sonicwall-threat-mindset-survey/.
