A new report, which analyzed the most prevalent cyberattack trends, identified an 87% increase in the total number of attacks over the course of last year.

The 2023 Annual Report: Cybersecurity Trends & Insights, published by Perception Point, identified a 356% growth in the amount of advanced phishing attacks attempted by threat actors in 2022. According to the report, the total number of attacks increased by 87%, highlighting the growing threat that cyberattacks pose to organizations. 

The annual report examines cyber threats based on intelligence gathered from the company’s Advanced Threat Prevention solutions, which intercept attacks across email, web browsers and cloud collaboration apps. 

The report also identified how the threat landscape is changing due to the rapid adoption of new cloud collaboration apps, cloud storage and services for productivity and external collaboration. Threat actors have pivoted their attack toolkits, reaching beyond email and web browsers to these apps and services. While email and the browser remain the leading attack vectors, 2022 saw a 161% surge in attacks on all other channels, such as cloud storage and collaboration apps. Phishing accounted for 67.4% of all attacks. 

The report also revealed 2022 saw an increase in Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks, which grew by 83%. 

Other key report highlights:

• A 363% rise in phone scam attacks over 2022. 
• Microsoft was the brand most impersonated in malicious email, 3.3 times more than the next most impersonated brand, LinkedIn.
• Advanced attacks made up 2% of all threats. Advanced attacks constituted 31.9% of the total on file storage tools and some 56.9% on Amazon S3 buckets.