Cyber risk predictions for 2024
Source: Middle East Insurance Review | Mar 2024
Fraudulent instruction incidents were down 15% for the year 2023, however, business email compromise (BEC) was up 18% y-o-y across industries, returning to levels seen in 2020 and 2021, according to a new report on cyber trends for 2024 by specialty insurer Beazley.
Retail, manufacturing, non-profit and government show significant improvement in managing fraudulent instruction risks, with declines of 38%, 35%, 23% and 20% y-o-y, respectively.
In contrast, while professional services continued to experience the highest number of BEC incidents, the BEC incident count was only 5% higher than last year. Compared to levels seen in 2020 and 2021, retail and business services show consistent improvement in lowering BEC rates, while most other industries have experienced fairly consistent rates.
Increased volatility is the name of the game when it comes to ransomware attacks. Phishing continues to decline among the policyholders, while incidents involving Remote Desktop Protocol are on the rise, and those related to software vulnerabilities remain relatively steady.
As always, these factors underscore the need for a continued, robust defense-in-depth approach to cyber security, not only to keep attackers out but also to prevent them from moving around and doing damage if they get in. M