Cyber Attacks Per Day – An Expert Analysis

Cyber attacks have become an unfortunate yet common reality of our increasingly digital and interconnected world. As individuals and organizations rely more on online systems and data, criminals, hackers, and even hostile nation states now have inviting targets for malicious cyber campaigns. Just how prolific are cyber attacks today? Recent statistics paint a sobering picture.

Cyber Attacks Now Number Over 30,000 Per Day Globally

According to cybersecurity firm CloudFlare, over 30,000 cyber attacks now occur globally every day. That works out to more than 1 attack every second on average. And experts say that number is rising rapidly year over year as attack methods become more automated and new vulnerabilities continue to surface.

The graph below illustrates the alarming growth recently:

The countries currently facing the highest number of cyber attacks per Internet user include:

• United Kingdom – 4,783 victims per 1 million users
• United States – 1,494 victims per 1 million users
• Canada – 174 victims per 1 million users
• Australia – 102 victims per 1 million users

In addition to attacks targeting specific companies or individuals, general malicious efforts also number in the millions per day:

• Over 24,000 malicious mobile apps blocked every day
• Over 500,000 new malware samples detected per day
• Over 333 billion spam emails sent per day

The effects of these widespread attacks add up. Over $4 billion was lost just to cyber fraud in 2021 within areas like online payment fraud, identity theft, and investment scams.

And one particularly disruptive type of attack, ransomware, impacts a business somewhere every 11 seconds, amounting to around 628 million cases per year.

The Threat Landscape is Worsening Over Time

Cybercrime has locked onto how profitability and effectiveness continue ramping upwards through trends like:

• Increasingly sophisticated hacking tools and malware – The criminal underground resembles a fully commercial industry with malware-as-a-service, phishing kits for hire, etc.
• Cryptocurrency enabling money laundering – Monetizing attacks has become far simpler through hard-to-trace cryptos demanding as ransom payments
• Weak personal security habits – Despite education efforts, individuals remain quick to open harmful links and attachments enabling access

Year after year, cyber attacks therefore persist by following the money while upgrading techniques.

The chart below conveys rising cyber attack costs from just 2015-2019:

Until the basic economics of cybercrime shift from high-reward and low-risk, hackers and organized groups will only grow more threatening by innovating more cunning and scalable attack variants.

Major Cyber Attack Types and Prevalence

Cyber attacks come in many forms, but several major categories make up a majority of all incidents:

Phishing

Still one of the most widely used attack vectors, phishing involves emails, websites, phone calls pretending to be from a legitimate organization to trick victims into handing over login credentials or sensitive data. These scams impacted over 300,000 businesses and individuals in 2021 alone.

Denial of Service (DoS)

DoS attacks overwhelm sites and servers by flooding them with fake traffic, aiming to take them offline and interrupt regular operations. While less common than phishing attempts, DoS can severely affect businesses dependent on their websites and apps working reliably.

Ransomware

Ransomware is malicious software that locks down computer systems until payment of a “ransom” is made. A business is hit with ransomware every 14 seconds typically through a user clicking a harmful link. This attack has forced several enterprises and government agencies to pay millions to regain access.

For example, global meat supplier JBS Foods paid $11 million in Bitcoin to hackers who paralyzed their plants.

Malware

Malware is any “malicious software” installed without the user’s consent, allowing remote control, data theft, cryptojacking, and spying. Mass malware campaigns still affect thousands of systems globally through tactics like drive-by downloads from malicious ads or sites.

The 2017 WannaCry ransomware outbreak relying on stolen NSA Windows exploits locked over 200,000 victims worldwide out of their systems within just days highlighting the potential scale.

Online Harassment

Online harassment involves repeatedly sending offensive, aggressive, or disturbing messages through channels like email and social media to individuals. Though emotionally rather than financially damaging, tens of thousands fall victim to coordinated harassment including doxing and threats.

Emerging Threat Vectors Expanding Risks

While organizations have wised up to legacy attack vectors like phishing in recent years through employee education and filtering tools, several worrying new trends have arisen requiring heightened vigilance:

Third-Party Supply Chain Attacks

With how interconnected modern software systems are through dependencies and APIs, attacking weakly secured third-parties has become a stealthy way to infiltrate better-defended end targets. For example, the sprawling Log4j vulnerability from late 2021 found in ubiquitous logging software lets remote code execution (RCE) hacks occur affecting possibly hundreds of thousands of downstream customers.

Managing this third-party ecosystem has thus become critical with mandates like cyber risk assessments. But near-endless chains still enable lateral movement.

Internet of Things (IoT) Infiltrations

As more physical consumer and business devices like IP cameras or smart thermometers come online, they vastly expand the attack surface with their generally weaker security standards. Most cannot easily run advanced malware detection or accept complex firmware upgrades to combat threats. And with access, damage can turn kinetic fast by directly controlling insecure equipment.

Major attacks like the record-setting Mirai IoT botnet DDoS or the ransomware-enabled Colonial Pipeline shutdown display the real-world havoc on the horizon as more industrial infrastructure adopts connected tech.

Critical Infrastructure Incursions

Cyber attacks have surpassed idle digital threats as nation-state adversaries now readily infiltrate power facilities, transportation networks, financial systems and more to gather intelligence or position themselves to unleash chaos when needed. Accidentally triggered outbreaks like the early 2015 BlackEnergy malware-driven Ukrainian blackout witness capabilities for infrastructural manipulation.

And consumer-facing essential services themselves sit vulnerable without updates along the lines of 2021’s spill-over attack from meat supplier JBS Foods via ransomware where grocery shelves quickly faced shortages from processing plants paralyzed.

Most at Risk: SMBs, Vital Industries and Individuals

In terms of who faces the most risk from all these daily attacks, SMBs (small/medium businesses) are overwhelmingly the most vulnerable with 63% targeted due to weaker defenses than large enterprises. Even simple lone hackers can quickly incapacitate them for profit.

Among organizations of all sizes, the healthcare, manufacturing, financial, and retail sectors attract the highest attention from bad actors due to the sensitive data they maintain and potential for disruption through ransomware locking access to critical systems. For example, a reported 94% of healthcare organizations suffered data breaches in 2020 spotlighting relentless adversary interest.

Governments also continue to be enticing targets, as displayed by high-profile Russian cyber attacks against Ukraine’s power grid and other critical infrastructure during their ongoing conflict. Specific individuals like celebrities and executives also face more routine threats of doxing or harassment as well.

Essentially any entity that houses something of value – monetary, strategic or social – must be wary in the current threat landscape.

Securing Against the Threat

While the scale of daily cyber attacks globally sounds daunting, both individuals and organizations can significantly reduce their risk through cybersecurity best practices like:

• Enable MFA (multi-factor authentication) wherever possible to prevent most unauthorized logins by requiring an additional identity confirmation step like a one-time passcode.

• Keep software regularly updated to limit in-the-wild vulnerabilities before patches fix them. Automate updates across devices for consistent protection.

• Install reputable endpoint detection (antivirus) and anti-malware tools on all systems to catch and halt known threat signatures rapidly before they spread or exfiltrate data.

• Create backups of important data regularly and store them offsite encrypted so that any intrusion like ransomware cannot block system access outright. Safely wipe and restore once uncovered.

• Educate personnel extensively on cyber attack tactics to spot like suspicious links/attachments in emails so human errors do not directly enable over 85% of breaches that still leverage basic social engineering.

• Adhere to cybersecurity frameworks like the industry-recognized NIST CSF that systematically address risk areas like Identity Management and Data Protection through best practices.

• Comply with data security regulations like HIPAA for the healthcare sector and PCI DSS for payment processors that legally mandate reasonable levels of maturity. Violations lead to substantial fines.

Final Thoughts

Given the profits driving cyber attacks even with 30,000 already occurring daily, the threat landscape will indubitably continue evolving in terms of new attack vectors, malware innovations and sheer volume. Both state-sponsored and criminal adversaries have built an entire underground industry around infiltrating systems faster than many can defend them.

Yet by perceiving themselves as lucrative targets and applying tested disciplines around security tools, awareness and standards, both individuals and organizations can withstand common intrusion goals and send most actors looking for easier prey. The days of threat ignorance must give way to candid understanding of cyber attack ubiquity and exploration of impactful safeguards before the next breach statistic speaks your name.