The European Cybersecurity Agency (ENISA) recently released its annual report on the cybersecurity threat environment facing the European Union. The report, Volatile Geopolitics Shake the Trends of the 2022 Cybersecurity Threat Landscape, identifies significant threats, threat actors and attack techniques, tracks major trends, and also provides mitigation measures.

The report, covering the period from July 2021 up to July 2022, emphasized that geopolitical tensions, specifically the Russian war in Ukraine, has greatly influenced the cyber threat landscape. Likewise, ransomware and phishing continue without waning, and supply chain compromises have increased – accounting for 17 percent of the intrusions in 2021 compared to less than 1 percent in 2020. The report also found that the public sector was the most targeted sector, accounting for around 24 percent of all reported incidents.

Furthermore, one of the increasing trends discussed in the report include the use of zero-day exploits. Additionally, hacktivism appears to be making a comeback, especially in light of the Russia-Ukraine war. And actors are focusing on larger and more complex DDoS attacks – to include moving towards mobile networks and Internet of Things (IoT) which are now being used in cyberwarfare. Finally, the proliferation of bots modelling personas have been disruptive by flooding government agencies with fake content and comments. Access the full report here or read a related article here.