Mar 2, 2021
Cyberattacks evolved in 2020 as threat actors sought to profit from the unprecedented socioeconomic, business and political challenges brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic.
In 2020, IBM Security X-Force observed attackers pivoting their attacks to businesses for which global Covid-19 response efforts heavily relied, such as hospitals, medical and pharmaceutical manufacturers, as well as energy companies powering the Covid-19 supply chain.
According to the 2021 X-Force Threat Intelligence Index, cyberattacks on healthcare, manufacturing, and energy doubled from the year prior, with threat actors targeting organisations that could not afford downtime due to risks of disrupting medical efforts or critical supply chains.
In fact, manufacturing and energy were the most attacked industries in 2020, second only to the finance and insurance sector. Contributing to this was attackers taking advantage of the nearly 50% increase in vulnerabilities in industrial control systems (I