by Angela Guess

A recent press release out of Dimension Data reports, “New research reveals that cyberattacks on the government sector doubled in 2016, hiking to 14% from 7% of all cyber security attacks in 2015. Attacks on the finance sector also rose dramatically from just 3% in 2015 to 14% of all attacks in 2016. The manufacturing sector came in at third place at 13%, while the retail sector, which topped the list of all cybersecurity attacks on all sectors in 2015 moved down into fourth place (11%). This is according to Dimension Data’s Executive’s Guide to the NTT Security 2017 Global Threat Intelligence Report, which was compiled from data collected by NTT Security and other NTT operating companies including Dimension Data, from the networks of 10,000 clients across five continents, 3.5 trillion security logs, 6.2 billion attempted attacks, and global honeypots[1] and sandboxes[2] located in over 100 different countries.”

The release goes on, “The report pinpoints a number of global geo-political events which could have contributed to the government sector being a cybersecurity attack target. These include: the US presidential election campaign; a new US administration with a more aggressive stance toward China and North Korea; China adopting a more aggressive policy stance in securing its vital ‘core interests’; US and European Union-led economic sanctions against Russia; Russian state-sponsored actors continuing cyber operations against Western targets; growing negative sentiment in the Middle East against the West’s aggression towards Syria.”

Read more at Real Wire.

Photo credit: Dimension Data