Since the beginning of computers, social engineering has been the number one way that computers and networks have been compromised. Social engineering is involved in 70% to 90% of all successful data breaches. Nothing else is even close (unpatched software and firmware are involved in 33% of successful attacks, everything else is 1% or less).

New analysis of blockchain activity shows scammers are needing less time to obtain crypto payments and are seeing higher payoffs per scam. I continue to repeatedly cover breakdowns of cybercrime activity from the folks at Chainalysis because it represents an unbiased view that some security vendors may inherently have (because their data is based on what their solutions do and don’t discover).

Top tips is a weekly column where we highlight what’s trending in the tech world today and list ways to explore these trends. This week, we’re looking at four ways you can minimize your attack surface. Organizational IT infrastructure is now more spread out, multi-layered, and complex than ever.

Government entities were in the top five industries targeted by both ransomware and business email compromise (BEC) attacks in 2023, according to Arctic Wolf. Additionally, the FBI reported that government entities were the third most-targeted sector by ransomware in 2023, and Arctic Wolf’s own research saw the average ransom for government organizations top $1 million USD that same year. It’s clear that cyber threats are plentiful for these entities.

Following the Sysdig Threat Research Team’s (TRT) discovery of LLMjacking — the illicit use of an LLM through compromised credentials — the number of attackers and their methods have proliferated.

Increased ransomware attacks on industrial control systems (ICS), mixed with general ICS insecurity found across the manufacturing sector, has given rise to a guide specifically addressing this risk. Manufacturing has been a target of ransomware for quite some time — I’ve even covered a recent attack focused on credential harvesting.

The digital footprint of organizations has evolved and grown significantly over the past 10 years, now its important to not only protect just IP addresses and domains but also social media, payment platforms, and third-party services. Identifying risks like vulnerabilities, supply chain attacks, and credential leaks are crucial for organizational security. The Cyberint team have analyzed 1000s of risks and threats and narrowed down the top 4 risks facing Latin America in 2024 and going into 2025.

In the modern, interconnected world, no organization is immune from a cyber attack. Indeed, most experts agree that it is a matter of “when,” not “if” an organization will be targeted by threat actors. If an attack is successful, the immediate costs — including potential ransom payments, lost revenue, and costs associated with remediation and restoration — can be substantial.