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Cyber extortion targets English speaking countries
Orange Cyberdefense , the specialist arm of Orange Group dedicated to cybersecurity , released its latest cyber extortion report , Cy-Xplorer 2024 . Examining data from a total of 11,244 confirmed business victims , the findings show a steep increase , 77 % YOY in the number of observable cyber extortion , Cy-X victims over the past 12 months , with analysis suggesting the actual number to be 50 – 60 % higher than directly observed , due to the dynamic and ever-changing nature of the cyber extortion ecosystem .
Cy-X is continuing to spread across the globe with victims recorded in 75 % of countries since 2020 . The USA , Canada , and the Great Britain have consistently recorded the highest number of victims , indicating that economic size , language , and business culture are key factors shaping the regional demographics of our victim dataset .
Aside from being the most impacted region , the USA has also seen the fastest growth at 108 %, followed closely by Great Britain and Canada at 96 % and 76 %, respectively . Other prominent growth regions included the Nordics and Africa , with growth rates of 78 % and 100 %, although off much lower starting bases .
Whilst the term big game hunting is often seen in reference to targeted and sophisticated attacks against large , high-value targets , Orange Cyberdefense has observed patterns of behaviours that suggest a much more opportunistic approach for most threat groups when it comes to Cy-X .
Orange Cyberdefense has observed that small businesses with less than 1,000 employees are 4.2X more likely to be impacted by Cy-X than medium and large businesses . Orange Cyberdefense suggest that this is simply because there are so many more small businesses that get swept up in the harvest as attackers attempt to hit whoever they can .
Source : Cy-Xplorer 2024 by Orange Cyberdefense
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