From mid-2020 and throughout 2021 there has been an upwards trend in the number of cyber-attacks experienced by organizations.
According to research from Check Point Research (CPR), there was a 50 percent increase in overall attacks per week on corporate networks compared to 2020.
In addition, in light of the Log4j vulnerability, which was uncovered in mid-December, Q4 of 2021 saw an all-time peak in weekly cyber-attacks per organization with CPR counting over 900 attacks per organization.
Industry breakdown
In its findings CPR broke down attacks by industry and acknowledged that education/research was the sector that experienced the highest volume of attacks, with an average of 1,605 attacks per organization every week.
This was a 75 percent increase from 2020. This was followed by the government/military sector, which had 1,136 attacks per week (47 percent increase), and the communications industry which had 1,079 attacks weekly per organization (51 percent increase).
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Regional data
Africa experienced the highest volume of attacks in 2021, as can be seen in the visual below, with an average of 1,582 weekly attacks per organization. This represents a 13 percent increase from 2020.
This was followed by APAC, which has an average of 1,353 weekly attacks per organization (25 percent increase); Latin America, with 1,118 attacks weekly (38 percent increase); Europe, with 670 attacks weekly (68 percent increase); and North America, with an average of 503 weekly attacks per organization (61 percent increase).