IBM has released its annual “Cost of a Data Breach Report” for the 17th time. As in previous years, the data was collected independently by the market researchers at the Ponemon Institute. In over 3,600 interviews, employees at more than 550 companies were surveyed on data breaches occurring between March 2021 and March 2022 – in 17 countries and across 17 sectors.

UK-based specialist insurer Hiscox recently released its “Cyber Readiness Report 2022”. One key outcome: Phishing emails are still the main gateway by which cyber criminals gain access to company networks.

Zscaler’s Threatlabz research team has just released new facts and figures on phishing attacks around the globe. The sheer number is reported to have risen by 29 percent over the past year, while at the same time the “bad guys” have been deploying new, even more cunning approaches against the enhanced bulwarks set up to defend companies.

The scale, sophistication and impact of phishing attacks have all reached unprecedented levels due to the work-from-home trend necessitated by the Coronavirus pandemic. Seventy-four percent of all IT professionals surveyed in a recent study responded that their company had fallen victim to a phishing attack over the past year.