A midsize company generally has annual revenue between $10 million and $1 billion. These companies employ between 1000 to 2000 people typically. According to Dun & Bradstreet’s database of commercially active US firms, more than 200,000 businesses in the US account for almost one-third of the United States annual GDP (Gross Domestic Product). It is not good news that most of these companies do not have any measures to block a cyberattack, which contributes to a good chunk of our economy.
The numbers are truly disturbing of security preparedness of the mid-size market space according to the recently completed study by Coro, which is a security technology provider. Coro’s research shows that 50% more midsize businesses were targeted by hackers in 2021 than in 2020. Healthcare and transportation sector was the most targeted, with an almost 125% increase. A ninety percent increase was seen in other sectors such as retail and manufacturing.
The number of attacks happening is not the only scary thing, but the complex nature of these attacks has grown too. Coro’s study shows that, compared to 2020, attacks happening at the smaller businesses are in the form of ordinary endpoint malware, insider threats, Wi-Fi phishing, and ransomware.
Most of the smaller companies nowadays are relying upon a new work ethic. They mostly use third-party cloud services for productivity software. Almost all the workforce in these companies have unmanaged devices and are remotely managed. The software and data of these machines are easily traceable over the vast internet.
The scarcity of competent IT specialists makes it easy to see why these companies are struggling for better cyber security. Some companies will ask themselves, What are my company’s chances of an attack on the vast list of other small businesses? Well, your chances just got better as attacks are getting smarter.
Due to the lack of IT security specialists, these smaller companies don’t even know what kind of threat they are facing. The email attacks have risen to 154 percent, and 1 percent of the total midsize companies have email protection. Eighty-eight percent of these companies, which have email protection, have their email protection settings misconfigured if you compare them to the current best practices. The percentage increases as you increase the type of attacks and add different complexities to them.
One of the best examples of a targeted attack is Wi-Fi phishing. In this type of attack, The attacker set up a Wi-Fi access point similar to the one used by the company. Employees don’t notice this and connect to the device as a standard network access point. The attacker can access all the data going over this phishing network at any time. Most companies ignore this type of attack, thinking it usually involves a person present on-site who can manually plant a similar device or someone outside the network present with a wireless device.
This is a hermit-crab mentality that can hurt your company big time. Most smaller companies don’t think of themselves as large enough, which will invoke someone to commit an in-person attack. This is the main reason they don’t protect them effectively against these types of attacks.
Coro’s study shows that Wi-Fi phishing attacks have grown by 203% against medium-sized companies, and most of them don’t have proper security protocols in place to save them.
Mid-sized companies should realize that the most dangerous thing they will be facing in the next year will be the increasing number of these insidious malware attacks. In research done by Coro, it is found that ‘naive’ attacks have dropped from 86 percent on midsize companies to 68 percent in 2021. Meanwhile, the same study shows that targeted attacks in the same time period have increased 2 to 4 times. The attacks against a particular company or a particular person in the company, which lacks identity management, are seeing a greater increase in their frequency. These targeted attacks have grown from 12% in 2020 to 26% in 2021.
The smaller companies should think more about the security of their important data and reputation as the attackers on these smaller firms have become smarter and are looking at particular targets.
Source :- Cyberattacks Against Midsize Companies in 2022 .
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