Cybercrime is on the upswing, and no industry is immune. The volume of cyberattacks is growing at an unprecedented rate, and attacks are severe – 96 percent of firms experienced at least one severe exploit according to a recent Fortinet Threat Landscape Report.  

One reason for this acceleration in the attack cycle is that successful malware spreads further and faster than ever before. This is due in large part to the expansion of the potential attack surface, resulting in a dramatic increase in the volume and sophistication of attacks across mobile devices, the Internet of Things, and cloud services. In addition, since malware is a commodity that can be bought, it makes it easy for criminals and would-be hackers to enter the world of cybercrime, as they don’t need to have sophisticated programming skills. Today’s complex attacks now often span across malware families and use advanced techniques to target multiple attack vectors simultaneously. This enhanced focus on innovation, combined with the increased speed and volume at which new threat variants are being released into the wild, allows cybercriminals to stay a step ahead of new efforts by vendors to improve their delivery of updated signatures and patches. As a result, these criminal efforts are successfully catching far too many organizations unprepared.