Automated cyber attacks are becoming increasingly prominent according to a new report conducted by Imperva.
The Web Application Attack Report (WAAR) studied attacks on 30 different enterprise and government web applications highlighting that assaults on websites and databases are now as frequent as 25,000 per hour.
The sheer volume of these attacks is worrying. However perhaps more concerning is the fact that most of them are conducted by automated bots. This makes the threat unique. Car jacking for instance cannot be automated and neither can purse theft. For this reason cyber crime has the potential to have greater financial impact than all other forms of crime put together.
“The level of automation in cyber attacks continues to shock us. The sheer volume of attacks that can be carried out in such a short period of time is almost unimaginable to most businesses,” stated Amichai Shulman, Imperva’s CTO and lead researcher.
Aside from automation cyber criminals are becoming increasingly evasive “Our data demonstrates that it is increasingly difficult to trace attacks to specific entities or organisations.”
What is known is that the majority of attacks originate from bots developed in the US (29%) and China (10%). Such bots are simply left to make consistent attempts to hack and retrieve critical data.
Imperva advise CEOs across all industries to always consider their businesses a target and especially “If you hold sensitive information with value for governments, employees or competition.”
