Ransomware intrusions totaled 432 in December, which was slightly lower than the peak figure in August but nearly four times higher than the number of incidents in January, despite other high-severity threats holding steady throughout 2024, according to Cyber Daily.
Mounting ransomware incidence has been fueled by Ransomware-as-a-Service operators, which have been developing increasingly sophisticated attack toolkits facilitating more stealthy intrusions, a report from Barracuda Networks revealed.
"The developers behind these platforms often have the time, resources, and skills to invest heavily in advanced and evasive toolsets and templates," said Eric Russo, director of SOC defensive security at Barracuda Networks. "Organizations need deep, extended security to boost their defenses and cyber resilience against such attacks."
Additional findings showed that malicious external network traffic was last year's leading attack vector, followed by iffy Microsoft 365 logins, worms and trojans, password spray attempts, and post-delivery email threats. Combating such threats requires not only the implementation of a robust extended detection and response system, but also aggressive threat hunting and remediation efforts, Russo added.
