Articles

IBM has released the 2024 X-Force Threat Intelligence Index highlighting an emerging global identity crisis as cybercriminals double down on exploiting user identities to compromise enterprises worldwide. The report uncovers the top trends and threats observed over the past year – and the apparent prevalence of critical infrastructure – like government and energy – as top targets of cyberattacks.

In Canada, some key findings include:

• Canada made up the most security incidents on government entities that X-Force responded to compared to any other country, with 50% of attacks observed in Canada being aimed at the government sector.
• Like previous years, threat activity was also observed against the Canadian energy sector, as well as the retail industry. Globally, 70% of attacks were against critical infrastructure organizations, nearly 85% of which could have been mitigated by security fundamentals.
• The cybersecurity landscape is poised to become even more complex in the wake of a breakout year for AI. X-Force projects that when a single generative AI technology approaches 50% market share or when the market consolidates to three or fewer technologies, it will trigger at-scale attacks against these platforms, putting underprepared organizations at risk.
• Attacks on Canadian organizations included various attempts to harvest credentials, leak data and extort victims. The abuse of valid account credentials represented 1 in 3 attacks globally, meaning that many cybercriminals are simply ‘logging in’ to compromised but still accounts to carry out their attacks.

For more details, you can find the full report here.