Cybersecurity Statistics You Should Know In 2023

Cybersecurity Statistics 2022

With cyberattacks liable to occur at any time, coming in so many guises, and constantly evolving – the cybersecurity industry has to move quickly. Consequently, for organisations and individuals alike, keeping up with the latest statistics of cybersecurity trends can be overwhelming. 

In response to this, we’ve compiled some of the most important cybersecurity statistics to know by the end of 2022 and beyond.  

General Cybersecurity Statistics 

It’s projected that cybercrime will cost the world economy $10.5 trillion annually by 2025. 

Cybersecurity Ventures
  • Cyberattacks have increased by 600% since the start of the COVID-19 Pandemic. 
  • The global annual cost of cybercrime is estimated to reach $6 trillion by the end of 2022.  
  • The cost of cybercrime cost represents 1% of global GDP.  
  • If measured as a country, cybercrime would be the third largest economy in the world, only trailing the USA and China. 
  • Cybercriminals can penetrate 93% of company networks 
  • Global cyberattacks rose by28% in  Q3 2022 - compared to the same period in 2021. 
  • The average cost of a data breach for SMEs ranges from $120,000 to $1.24 million. 
  • SMEs are the victim of 50% of all cyber attacks.   
  • Enterprises experienced 130 security breaches per year, per organization, on average. 
  • Remote working conditions have increased the average cost of a data breach by $137,000. 
  • 71.1 million people are victims of cyberattacks each year. 
  • Individuals lose $318 billion to cyberattacks, which works at $4,476 on average. 

Cybersecurity Statistics Per Industry 

  1. The Education and Research industry suffered the highest number of recorded cyberattacks, with an average of 2,148 attacks per organisation per week in Q3 2022 – an increase of 18% over Q3 2021. 
  2. The second most attacked industry was Government and Military, with 1,564 weekly attacks on average – representing a 20% rise over the previous year.  
  3. Third, was the Healthcare industry, which had an average of 1,426 attacks per week – a staggering increase of 60%  year on year. 

    Below are the cybersecurity statistics featuring the number of average weekly attacks for other key industries, with the increase from the same period the previous year in parentheses: 
  • ISP/MSP – 1313 (11%) 
  • Communications – 1268 (9%) 
  • Banking and Finance (40%) 
  • Utiliies – 1106 (39%) 
  • Insurance and Legal – 976 (35%) 
  • Retail and Wholesale – 951 (69%) 
  • Leisure and Hospitality – 932 (24%) 
  • Manufacturing – 901 (21%) 

Data Breach Cybersecurity Statistics 

The average cost of a data breach has been $4.35 million, so far in 2022 – the highest on record. This is up from an average of $4.24 million in 2021.  

IBM
  • It took 243 days to identify a data breach in 2022, on average – compared to 212 days in 2021. 
  • Data breaches exposed 22 billion records in 2021. 
  • It’s estimated that around 70 % of data breaches in 2021 were financially motivated. Conversely, 5% were motivated by espionage. 
  • In 2021, close to 40% of data breaches involved phishing, 11% involved malware, and around 22% involved hacking of some kind.  
  • The most common malicious email attachment types are .doc and .dot at 37%, with .exe as the next highest at 19.5%.  
  • Since 2016, cybercriminals have stolen $43 billion through compromised business emails.  
  • Insiders were responsible for 36% of data breaches suffered by organisations with over 1,000 employees. For organisations with less than 1000 employees, the number jumps to 44%. 
  • Software supply chain attacks affected around 60% of organisations in 2021 
  • 79% of organisations fell victim to at least one cloud data breach in the past 18 months. 
  • 50% of websites were susceptible to at least one exploitable vulnerability throughout 2021. 

Malware Cybersecurity Statistics 

Including the time required to resolve the attack, a malware attack costs an organisation over $2.5 million, on average. 

Accenture
  • 5.4 billion malware attacks occurred worldiwide in 2022. This is compared to the 5.4 billion malware attacks carried out in 2021.  
  • 92% of malware is delivered by email. 
  • A ransomware attack occurs every 14 seconds worldwide.  
  • There were over 270,000 previously unseen malware variants in the first half of 2022 alone; an average of 1,500 new variants every day. This represents a 45% increase over the same period in 2021 last year.  
  • The average ransomware payment in the first half of 2022 was $812,360. This is compared to an average of $570,000 in 2021.   
  • The average cost of a ransomware attack – not including the ransom payment itself, has been $4.54 million on average so far in 2022.  
  • It typically takes victims of ransomware attacks 326 days to detect and respond. This is compared to the 277 days response time for other types of data breaches. 
  • The total cost of ransomware attacks by the end of 2022 is estimated to exceed $20 billion. 

Impersonation Statistics

Statistics of cybersecurity you might not think about at first are the impersonation statistics. Most impersonated brands used in phishing attacks currently include: 

  • Google (13%) 
  • Amazon (13%) 
  • Facebook and WhatsApp (9%) 
  • Microsoft (7%) 
  • Apple (2%) 
  • Netflix (2%) 
  • PayPal (2%) 

Cryptojacking Statistics

  • Cryptojacking increased by over 30% in the first half of 2022 
  • Cybercriminals stole approximately $3.2 billion worth of cryptocurrency in 2021 — up by an alarming 516% compared to 2020. 
  • Cybercriminals steal around $46 million worth of cryptocurrency every month. 

Which of these statistics of cybersecurity concern your organisation the most in 2022? Get in touch with RiskXchange to discuss how to best improve your company’s cybersecurity defences.