Recent cybersecurity trends were analyzed in a report by Netwrix. The report reveals that 68% of organizations experienced a known cyberattack within the last 12 months. Nearly 1 in 6 (16%) of those organizations estimated the financial damage to be at least $50,000. Additionally, 40% of the breached organizations incurred unplanned expenses and 10% suffered other serious consequences, such as loss of competitive edge, decreased sales or customer churn.

The study found that 44% of organizations are insured and 15% plan to purchase a policy within the next 12 months. Nearly 1 in 4 (22%) of the organizations with a policy had to improve their security posture to become eligible for the policy. The survey also reveals that on-premises infrastructures suffer more cyberattacks than the cloud. The starkest difference was for ransomware and other malware attacks, which were reported by nearly twice as many respondents for on-premises environments (37%) as for the cloud (19%).

Other survey findings include:

  • 81% of organizations now use at least one cloud environment and more than a third (37%) of the remainder plan to adopt cloud technologies within 12 months.
  • Phishing is the most common attack vector: 73% of respondents suffered this type of cyberattack on premises and 58% experienced it in the cloud.
  • Account compromise attacks in the cloud continue to intensify, with 39% of respondents reporting it in 2023 compared to 31% in 2022 and just 16% in 2020.
  • Risk associated with an organization's own employees was the top data security concern, cited by 58% of respondents.
  • The three main IT priorities for 2023 have remained the same since 2019: data security, network security and cybersecurity training.