2020 saw 62.6 Billion detected cyber threats

Trend Micro Incorporated has detected 119,000 cyber threats per minute in 2020 as home workers and infrastructure came under new pressure from attacks.

As per the report, home networks were a major draw last year for cybercriminals looking to pivot to corporate systems, or compromise and conscript IoT devices into botnets. Trend Micro found attacks on homes surged 210% to reach nearly 2.9 billion-amounting to 15.5% of all homes. The vast majority (73%) of attacks on home networks involved brute forcing logins to gain control of a router or smart device.

Email-borne threats made up 91% of the 62.6 billion threats blocked by Trend Micro last year, indicating that phishing attacks continued to be hugely popular. The company detected nearly 14 million unique phishing URLs in 2020 as attackers targeted distracted home workers.

"In 2020, businesses faced unprecedented threat volumes hitting their extended infrastructure, including the networks of home workers. Familiar tactics such as phishing, brute forcing and vulnerability exploitation are still favoured as the primary means of compromise, which should help when developing defenses," said Jon Clay, director of global threat communications for Trend Micro. "Global organizations have now had time to understand the operational and cyber risk impact of the pandemic. The new year is a chance to adjust and improve with comprehensive cloud-based security to protect distributed staff and systems."