Major industries reported two critical security incidents every day in 2023

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Is any industry safe from hackers?

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Major industries, including finance, IT, industrial and government sectors, report over two critical security incidents with direct human involvement per day, new research from Kaspersky shows.

The Managed Detection and Response Analyst Report for 2023 details that more than one in five (22.9%) of high-severity incidents in 2023 were reported by the government sector, closely followed by the IT sector (15.4%).

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Almost one quarter of critical security incidents during 2023 were perpetrated with direct human involvement, with the most popular living-off-the-land attacks utilising powershell.exe, rendll32.exe and msiexec.exe.

In terms of MITRE ATT&CK techniques, phishing, account manipulation and exploitation of remote services were the most popular techniques used by attackers. The mean time to report for high severity incidents ranked at 36.37 minutes, with medium and low severity incidents taking 32.55 and 48.01 minutes respectively.

Speaking on the results of the report, Sergey Soldatov, Head of Security Operations Center at Kaspersky said, “In 2023, Kaspersky detected a smaller number of high-severity incidents, but observed a simultaneous increase in the number of medium and low severity ones. This redistribution of occurrences is associated with the detection of malware without visible traces of active human participation in attacks, which can be explained by the “commoditization of tools”.”

“However, it’s important to understand that the low number of high-severity incidents does not necessarily indicate low damage. Targeted attacks are now planned more carefully, and become more dangerous. Therefore, we recommend the use of effective automated cybersecurity solutions managed with the help of experienced SOC analysts,” Soldatov said.

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Benedict Collins
Benedict Collins
Senior Writer, Security

Benedict is a Senior Security Writer at TechRadar Pro, where he has specialized in covering the intersection of geopolitics, cyber-warfare, and business security.

Benedict provides detailed analysis on state-sponsored threat actors, APT groups, and the protection of critical national infrastructure, with his reporting bridging the gap between technical threat intelligence and B2B security strategy.

Benedict holds an MA (Distinction) in Security, Intelligence, and Diplomacy from the University of Buckingham Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies (BUCSIS), with his specialization providing him with a robust academic framework for deconstructing complex international conflicts and intelligence operations, and the ability to translate intricate security data into actionable insights.