The record surge this year in attempted cybersecurity attacks on UK businesses saw a slight decline in Q3, but remained well above last year’s levels, according to the latest figures from business ISP Beaming.
Beaming also identified an increased number of IP addresses used in attacks originating from China, Egypt and India.
On average, businesses were subjected to 176,206 attacks each, equivalent to one every 45 seconds, a decline of two per cent on the previous quarter. Beaming’s analysts identified 349,575 unique IP addresses used in the attacks.
Of these, 49,303 were traced to locations in China, 24,149 to India, and 20,619 to Egypt. These traces represent quarterly increases of IP addresses used in these countries of 34 per cent, 159 per cent, and 192 per cent respectively.
Rounding out the top five of countries where attacking IP addresses were located were Taiwan and the USA.
As has been the case for the entire year, the assets targeted the most were IoT devices such as networked printers and security cameras, file-sharing applications, and company databases.
Beaming said that file-sharing applications had seen a more than 90 per cent increase in attacks this year.
“Malicious cyber activity remained at exceptionally high levels over the summer, with UK companies experiencing an online attack every 45 seconds on average,” said Beaming managing director Sonia Blizzard.
“With millions of employees still working from home, the risk of human or technological failures leading to serious breaches is now higher than ever.
“Small and medium sized businesses can boost their resilience to cyber attacks by investing in employee training and following their larger counterparts in adopting more sophisticated cybersecurity technologies such as two-factor authentication, network perimeter firewalls and private dedicated networks.”
Beaming analyses thousands of UK businesses in real time, but does not further disclose its methodology, in order to prevent aiding cyber attacks.
