Government Was The Most Targeted Sector by Cyber Criminals in Q2 2021: McAfee

McAfee Enterprise has released its October 2021 Advanced Threat Research Report that uncovers the most impactful cybercriminal activity in the second quarter of 2021, focusing on ransomware and cloud security threats.

Over the past quarter, with the continued shift to a more flexible workforce due to the pandemic and the highly publicized Colonial Pipeline attack, cyber criminals introduced new – and updated – threats and tactics in campaigns targeting prominent sectors, Despite the most influential underground forums, XSS and Exploit announcing a ban on ransomware advertisements and the DarkSide ransomware group abruptly halting its operations - McAfee Enterprise’s global threat network identified a surge in attacks in this quarter.

Each quarter, McAfee assesses the state of the cyber threat landscape based on in-depth research, investigative analysis, and threat data gathered by the McAfee Global Threat Intelligence cloud from over a billion sensors across multiple threat vectors around the world.

Key findings from the report:

• The most targeted sectors by ransomware in Q2 of 2021 were the government, followed by telecom, energy, and media & communications.
• The Government was the most targeted sector in Q2 of 2021 with a 64% increase in publicly reported cyber incidents
• India ranks second only to the United States in most cloud incidents targeting countries, followed by Australia, Canada, and Brazil
• In Q2 2021, malware was the technique used most often in reported incidents. Spam showed the highest increase of reported incidents – 250% -- from Q1 to Q2 2021, followed by Malicious Script with 125% and Malware with 47%.
• Incidents surged in primarily in the Unities States and Europe in Q2 2021. The United States experienced the most reported incidents in the second quarter, and Europe saw the largest increases in reported incidents in Q2 with 52%.