The 2020 Security Operations Report from Arctic Wolf is pulling back the curtain on some lesser known trends in their new security operations threat report.

Detailing overlooked security trends across the industry since the start of the pandemic, the report finds the following:

• A rise of nocturnal attackers: In Q2, 35% of high-risk incidents were observed between the hours of 8 PM and 8 AM when most employees and contractors had gone offline for the day.
• Increased patch time: The time it takes to deploy patches for critical vulnerabilities increased by an extra 40 days since March, giving attackers substantially more dwell time.
• Booming dark web attacks: Since March, account takeover incidents where corporate credentials are exposed on the dark web have increased by 429%; and more.
• Ransomware and phishing expand: Ransomware and phishing attempts detected in Q2 increased by 64% over Q1, 2020. This was more pronounced in the banking industry that saw these threats increase by 520% between March and June.
• WIFI connectivity skyrockets: Since March, the number of devices connecting to open WIFI networks increased by 243%. Without proper controls in place, geographically dispersed workforces face increased risks of attacks of unsecured networks.

Arctic Wolf, which provides security operations as a service, gathered data from its own security operations platform and customer experiences to present the security operations findings and insights in this report.