Report: Cyberattacks Determined By Type Of Interaction And IT Infrastructure

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

The type of cyberattack perpetrated against a company is determined by the way it interacts with its customers as well as where its infrastructure resides, according to the Alert Logic Fall 2015 Cloud Security Report. Understanding this can help you proactively protect your clients against the most likely sources of cybercriminals targeting them.

The study found that businesses with a large volume of online customer interactions are targets for Web application attacks, for example, while businesses with few online customer interactions are targets for brute force or phishing attacks.

It is important to remember, however, with growing use of public cloud infrastructures, hackers have a larger attack surface through which to gain access to sensitive data. Will Semple, VP of security services for Alert Logic, points out on-premises systems continue to be targeted at the same rate as they were before growth in cloud deployments. The report states, “Top cyberattack methods aimed at cloud deployments grew 45 percent, 36 percent and 27 percent respectively over the previous year while top attacks aimed at on-premises deployments remained relatively flat.” The increase in cloud attacks suggests cybercriminals are attempting to break into a growing number of applications being deployed in the cloud.

The report found an average of 2,308 detected potential cyberattacks per day, or roughly 842,711 attacks annually, with a 45 percent year-over-year increase in attacks on the cloud.

Alert Logic’s report, based on analysis of one billion events in the IT environments of more than 3,000 of its customers between January 1 and December 31, 2014,

To download the complete report, click here.