Telecoms faced the greatest number of incidents likely due to attackers’ interest in sensitive data and exploitation of trusted relationships. Organisations often grant elevated access to external providers to allow them to manage internal systems as well as cloud-based environments.
Mass media are traditionally targeted during international conflicts while construction development firms are attractive to threat actors due to extensive subcontractor use.
In the global telecommunications sector, there were 284 cybersecurity incidents per 10 000 systems, according to Kaspersky’s managed detection and response (MDR) statistics for January to June 2024. Mass media companies experienced 180 attacks per 10 000 systems. The construction development, food and industrial sectors followed with 179, 122 and 121 incidents respectively.
“A successful attack, especially an advanced one, on a telecoms company can expose millions of customers’ records including contact details, ID numbers and credit card information. It can also serve as a possible springboard for further attacks on clients through trusted relationship exploitation. That’s why this sector is so attractive to cybercriminals. Mass media organisations become an increasingly frequent target during international conflicts, which are often characterised by information warfare in which they play a crucial role. Construction development firms have significant cash flows and rely on subcontractors, making them vulnerable to attacks via trusted partners’ infrastructures and spear phishing,” explains Sergey Soldatov, head of Kaspersky MDR.
Kaspersky’s statistics for the first six months of this year also revealed that telecommunication companies faced the highest average number of critical incidents with 32 attacks per 10 000 systems. Critical incidents are human-driven attacks or malware threats that have potential or actual significant impact on the company’s infrastructure. The IT industry followed with nearly 12 average critical incidents while government experienced eight.
Globally, the number of cyber incidents remained relatively stable with a slight decrease. Organisations strengthened their cybersecurity measures after the spike in attacks in 2021-2022. Enhanced approaches, such as vulnerability assessments and penetration tests, have improved overall security.
