By Srinath Srinivasan
The 2020 threat landscape in India was largely shaped by the pandemic. As the pandemic’s timeline of events and progress unfolded, so did attack trends shift. Ransomware was the leading attack form in India with a 40% share in the all round threat landscape. Further, digital currency mining and server access attacks hit Indian businesses final year. We also witnessed cybercriminals utilizing relief efforts and public overall health info as spam lures like targeted attacks on crucial elements of the vaccine provide chain.
“These all remain issues in 2021,” says Sudeep Das, safety application technical sales leader, IBM Technology Sales, India/South Asia.
“Organisations need to harden their cloud environments with a zero-trust approach to their security strategy and leverage AI to monitor, detect and contextualise dynamic behaviours and movements across hybrid cloud environments, to verify the legitimacy (or lack of) of a threat and automate a response.” He suggests the use of Confidential Computing for a larger level of isolation for safe enclaves of information. “It encrypts data during processing, whereas before, data had to be decrypted just before being processed, leaving it potentially vulnerable.” Even if cloud environments are compromised, the information would be futile/inaccessible to a malicious actor with technologies such as Confidential Computing.
Recently, IBM Security released the 2021 X-Force Threat Intelligence Index highlighting how cyberattacks evolved in 2020. The Threat Intelligence Index is based on insights and observations from monitoring more than 150 billion safety events per day in more than 130 nations. It highlights that attackers pivoted their attacks to firms for which worldwide Covid-19 response efforts heavily relied, such as hospitals, health-related and pharmaceutical companies, as properly as power businesses powering the Covid-19 provide chain.
“In essence, the pandemic reshaped what is considered critical infrastructure today, and attackers took note,” says Nick Rossmann, worldwide threat intelligence lead, IBM Security X-Force. “Many organisations were pushed to the front lines of response efforts for the first time – whether to support Covid-19 research, uphold vaccine and food supply chains, or produce personal protective equipment.”
Cyberattacks on healthcare, manufacturing, and power doubled from the year prior, with threat actors targeting organisations that could not afford downtime due to dangers of disrupting health-related efforts or crucial provide chains. IBM says that manufacturing and power have been the most attacked industries in 2020, second only to the finance and insurance coverage sector. Attackers took benefit of the practically 50% boost in vulnerabilities in industrial manage systems (ICS), which manufacturing and power rely on.
Asia-Pacific area accounted for 25% of all attacks observed by IBM Security X-Force in 2020, up from 22% as observed in the area in 2019. India was the second most attacked nation in the Asia pacific area following Japan and closely followed by Australia in the third location. Finance and insurance coverage was the leading attacked business in India (60%), followed by manufacturing and expert services. “In 2020, most of the attacks on companies in India that we observed spanned from May to July,” says Das.
Specific to the Asia Pacific area, the attacks varied from information theft, ransomware, remote access trojans (RAT), prevalent vulnerabilities and exposure (CVE) and organization e mail compromise (BEC). Data theft created up 22% of all attacks in the area, surpassing even ransomware the latter created up 19% of all attacks in Asia in 2020.
Crucial FINDINGS
- India was the second most attacked nation in the Asia Pacific
- Attacks on India created up 7% of all attacks X-Force observed on Asia in 2020
- Finance and insurance coverage was the leading attacked business in India (60%), followed by manufacturing and expert services
- Ransomware was the leading attack form, creating up roughly 40% of attacks. Digital currency mining and server access attacks hit Indian businesses final year
- In 2020, most of the attacks on businesses in India spanned from May to July