New research indicates that a surge in cyberattacks in the final three months of last year made 2022 the worst year on record for malicious online activity against UK businesses.
Business internet service provider (ISP) Beaming says that on average, UK companies experienced 687,489 online attempts to breach their systems in 2022, the equivalent of one every 46 seconds. Prior to last year, the worst year on record was 2020, when businesses experienced 686,961 cyberattack attempts each.
October to December 2022 was also the busiest quarter for cyberattacks on UK businesses since Beaming began tracking malicious web activity in 2016. Companies experienced 177,228 cyberattacks each, on average, in the period. This was 11,295 (seven percent) more attacks than in the corresponding quarter of 2021 and 275 more than between April and June 2020, the previous busiest quarter on record.
Beaming identified almost 1.2 million IP addresses being used to launch cyberattacks on UK businesses in 2022 and traced more than a fifth (268,484) of them to locations in China. Beaming also identified large numbers of attacking IP addresses that appeared to be located in the USA (90,663), India (46,783), Brazil (46,783), Russia (35,842) and Taiwan (30,581).
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One in seven cyberattacks received by UK companies in 2022 sought to gain control of devices connected to the Internet of Things. Businesses also experienced more than 5,000 attempts each to breach their databases, file-sharing services, web applications and remote desktop systems in 2022.
“UK businesses have experienced a constant bombardment of cyberattacks over recent years, but the volume of activity had appeared to be falling from the extraordinarily high levels that accompanied the first Covid lockdown. The surge in malicious online activity we witnessed in 2022 is a timely reminder that no one can afford to be complacent,” said Sonia Blizzard, managing director of Beaming.
“Many businesses have taken steps to improve the resilience of their online systems and IT infrastructure, and there is plenty that internet service providers like Beaming can do to help protect customers at both a network and firewall level. Most cyberattacks use automated scripts that scour the internet for the weakest links. Businesses that haven’t improved their online resilience in the last year or so are sitting ducks for hackers.”
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