- Deepfakes and attacks on critical infrastructure are top concerns in Blackberry’s Global Threat Intelligence report.
- 600,000 attacks were launched against critical infrastructure between July and September 2024
- 45% of them were against financial institutions
Critical infrastructure attacks continue to dominate the cybersecurity debate, with Blackberry’s Global Threat Intelligence report revealing that nearly 600,000 attacks were launched against critical infrastructure attacks between July and September 2024.
The financial sector continues to face a considerable number of cyberattacks that could bring it to its knees and is the target of 45% of these attacks, followed closely by healthcare establishments which account for 30% of incidents, followed by 17% for government services. Downtime is costly for these industries, making them more likely to pay a ransom to quickly restore systems, making them an attractive target.
The rise of AI has inevitably led to an increase in cyberattacks, but also a particularly predictable increase in deepfake scams. These scams use an AI-generated image, video, or voice to impersonate an executive or infiltrate businesses. This is expected to result in a staggering loss of $40 billion by 2027 alone, posing a growing threat.
Deepfakes erode trust and represent an unprecedented challenge for stakeholders who can no longer have 100% confidence in the authenticity of executive communications.
This has highlighted the serious need for regulatory frameworks against deepfakes, such as the new US No Fraud AI Act and Canadian legislation regarding non-consensual media.
Unsurprisingly, ransomware groups are also shaping the threat landscape, with infamous groups like LockBit and ALPHV proving “silent but deadly” by evading detection.
“Our attack surface has never been larger, with threat actors and nation states expanding their horizons for cyberespionage attacks, while ransomware groups are becoming more sophisticated in their campaigns,” said Ismael Valenzuela , vice president of threat research and intelligence at BlackBerry.
“But we have never been more prepared. We have the tools, technology and protocols necessary to protect ourselves and mitigate the impact of attacks, and our industry is equipped to keep up with the evolving methodology of threat actors.
