SonicWall published its 2021 “Cyber Threat Report,” noting a 151 percent year-on-year increase in the number of ransomware attacks reported globally, for the first half of 2021. More than 304.7 million attacks were logged.
Despite an overall decline of 22 percent for malware strikes in 2021, SonicWall did observe:
- Top month for ransomware attacks was June 2021 (78.4 million).
- Top-affected ransomware countries including the U.S., the U.K., Germany, South Africa and Brazil.
- Most-impacted states including Florida (111.1 million), New York (26.4 million), Idaho (20.5 million) and Louisiana and Rhode Island (8.8 million each).
- Most-frequently hit sectors including education, healthcare, government and retail.
- Three ransomware families – Ryuk, Cerber and SamSam – accounting for 64 percent of instances.
- Cryptojacking practices increasing 23 percent, with 51.1 million attacks for 2021.
- 5 trillion attempts (up 9 percent), 2.1 million encrypted threats (up 26 percent) and 32.2 million IoT attacks (up 59 percent) to date in 2021.
SonicWall’s data was pulled from more than 1.1 million global sensors in over 215 countries and territories, with 140,000+ malware samples collected and over 28 million attacks blocked per day.
