A new report highlights a 40% increase in cyberattacks targeting government agencies and the public services sector.

According to the Quarterly Global Threat Intelligence Report, released by BlackBerry Limited, the company’s AI-driven cybersecurity solutions stopped 55,000 individual attacks overall between March and May 2023.

Other key report highlights

• Increase in cyberattacks per minute: Over the past 90 days, the company stopped more than 1.5 million attacks. Threat actors deployed an average of 1.7 new malware samples per minute, a 13 percent increase from the previous reporting period’s average of 1.5 new samples per minute, highlighting attackers’ work to diversify their tooling to bypass defensive controls.
• Healthcare and financial services industries are most targeted: In healthcare, the convergence of valuable data and critical services presents a lucrative target for cybercriminals. The company stopped more than 109,922 attacks across the healthcare sector over the past 90 days. As ransomware groups continue to target organizations in these industries with information-stealing malware, the report highlights the importance of securing patient data and safeguarding the delivery of essential medical services.
• Mobile malware on the rise: Financial services institutions are facing persistent threats through smartphone-centric commodity malware, ransomware attacks and the rise of mobile banking malware targeting the growing trend of digital banking services. The report explores cybersecurity challenges for the financial sector as threat actors exploit an online-banking-first mindset.