Around five in six large organisations were subject to some form of cyber-attack in the past year and things look set to get worse, says the latest Internet Security Threat Report from Symantec.
The IT security firm said that this represented a 40 percent increase from the year before, with the UK the second most targeted nation worldwide and top in Europe.
Around two-in-three attacks were aimed at SMBs, which put not only themselves at risk but also their customers and partners.
The report said that cyber-criminal attacks are becoming more advanced and employing covert tactics such as infecting software updates.
Phishing attacks were also up on last year, increasing by eight percent on 2014. But cyber-criminals are getting more efficient sending 20 percent fewer emails to successfully reach their victims. The phishing emails incorporated drive-by downloads and other web-based exploits.
The report found that email remained the attack vector of choice for the cyber-criminal, but they also continued to experiment with new methods via mobile devices and social networks to reach more people with less effort.
Mike Langley, regional vice president at Palo Alto Networks told SC Magazine via email that the threat landscape is changing and over the last couple of years there has been a "dramatic change" in both attackers and the techniques they use.
"By some estimates cyber-crime is now a $1+ trillion industry. In 2014, 783 data breaches resulted in the loss of more than 85 million records, and 2015 numbers are already tracking worse," he said. "Hackers are carrying out sophisticated and multi-faceted attacks which are costing businesses millions of dollars in lost revenue as they compromise their customer data."
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