In 2020 cyber attacks boom: according to the Clusit report they grow both in number and severity and cause enormous economic damage.
The Clusit, Italian Association for Information Security that sees among its members the Italian bigwigs of industry, technology, communications and finance, raises the alarm: 2020 was a terrible year for cyber attacks in the world and also in Italy, with a growth in both the number of attacks and their severity.
Restricting only to those known to the public, in fact, last year the Clusit has surveyed 1,871 serious attacks, with a growth of 12% compared to 2019. The figure of the economic damage caused by these attacks on a global level is frightening: it is equal to twice the Italian GDP. Companies, in fact, are increasingly the preferred victims of hackers who have now turned into real digital extortionists, while only 14% of the attacks were aimed at political cyberespionage (largely related to the US elections in November 2020). Also of concern is the centrality of the Covid theme in malicious campaigns in 2020.
Cybercrime and Covid-19
The Covid-19 was central to hackers' activities in 2020 (and is central in this early 2021). On the one hand, it is being exploited as a theme for phishing emails to lure users into clicking on links and downloading infected files. Dall’altra si registra un forte aumento degli attacchi al settore della Sanità.
Di questi attacchi il 55% è stato finalizzato a scopo direttamente economico, anche tramite i virus di tipo ransomware che criptano i file e chiedono un riscatto, mentre il restante 45% degli attacchi erano finalizzati a rubare informazioni sulla ricerca scientifica per fini di spionaggio industriale nel settore farmaceutico.
Un trend preoccupante
Secondo Gabriele Faggioli, presidente di Clusit, l’aumento degli attacchi non è sporadico, ma è un vero e proprio trend che va avanti da almeno quattro anni: “La crescita straordinaria delle minacce cyber, in particolare nell’ultimo quadriennio, ha colto alla sprovvista tutti gli stakeholders della nostra civiltà digitale e rappresenta ormai a livello globale una ‘tassa’ sull’uso dell’Ict che arriva a duplicare il valore del Pil italiano stimato nel 2020, considerando le perdite economiche dirette e quelle indirette dovute al furto di proprietà intellettuale“.