Amid an economic downturn, cybersecurity staffing shortages and endless cyberattacks, financially motivated attacks are the top concern among IT professionals

SonicWall, publisher of the world’s most quoted ransomware threat intelligence, released the 2022 SonicWall Threat Mindset Survey which found that 66% of customers are more concerned about cyberattacks in 2022, with the main threat being focused on financially motivated attacks like ransomware.

“No one is safe from cyberattacks — businesses or individuals,” said SonicWall Executive Chairman of the Board Bill Conner. “Today’s business landscape requires persistent digital trust to exist. Supply-chain attacks have dramatically changed the attack surface of the typical enterprise in the past few years, with more suppliers and service providers touching sensitive data than ever before. It’s likely we’ll see continued acceleration and evolution of ransomware tactics, as well as other advanced persistent threats (APTs), as cybercrime continues to scale the globe seeking both valuable and weak targets.”

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Companies are not only losing millions of dollars to unending malware and ransomware strikes, but cyberattacks on essential infrastructure are impacting real-world services. Despite the growing concern of cyberattacks, organizations are struggling to keep pace with the fast-moving threat landscape as they orient their business, networks, data and employees against unwavering cyberattacks.

“The evolving cyber threat landscape has made us train our staff significantly more,” said Stafford Fields, IT Director, Cavett Turner & Wyble. “It’s made us spend more on cybersecurity. And what scares me is that an end-user can click on something and bring all our systems down — despite being well protected.”

SonicWall’s proprietary threat mindset survey uncovered additional findings:

• Rising Concerns about Escalating Cyberattacks: There is growing concern regarding cyberattacks amongst 66% of organizations surveyed; ransomware leads the distress as 91% of all customers cited it as their biggest concern. Phishing and spear-phishing (76%), as well as encrypted malware (66%), comprised the top three concerns.
• Anxiety around Financially Motivated Cyber Threats: 89% of organizations are most concerned of financially motivated threats; 43% of those surveyed were concerned about state-sponsored threats.
• Organizations Too Slow to Patch: Despite rising cyberattack concerns, 78% of organizations don’t patch critical vulnerabilities within 24 hours of patch availability; another 12% only apply critical patches when time allows.
• Skills Gap: 46% of organizations don’t have enough IT headcount, while only 3% feel they have more than enough headcount to tackle day-to-day security operations.

In an effort to promote cybersecurity attentiveness, SonicWall supports Cybersecurity Awareness Month in October with an added emphasis on the ‘people’ component of cybersecurity. Individuals, employees and consumers alike need to take basic steps to protect online information and privacy, while vendors and suppliers can take ownership by putting strong cybersecurity guidelines in place at work to help prevent.

“SonicWall’s solution suite puts the security IT mind to rest,” said Quarterhorse Technology CEO Ken Fletcher. “The home office security is extended to the devices in the field, so the worry of feeling unprotected when out of the office is mitigated.”

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