Acronis Reports: 91.1% of Organizations Affected by AI-Enhanced Phishing Attacks

According to Acronis, a cyber protection company, AI-enhanced attacks are becoming more frequent, and many organizations' cybersecurity is ill-prepared for the amount of new threats. This is revealed in their most recent cyber threats report.

Maurine Lind

February 20, 2024

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The most recent Acronis report, "Cyberthreats Report, H2 2023: Alarming rise in cyberattacks, SMBs and MSPs in the crosshairs," describes how attacks on organizations increased by 54%.

In the paper, it is stated that since OpenAI's ChatGPT was made available to the public at the end of 2022, the application of generative AI for cyberattacks has grown significantly. It was discovered, in fact, that AI-enhanced phishing impacted 91.1% of organizations in 15 major nations and was a factor in the 222% increase in email attacks in 2023 compared to the second half of 2022.

AI-powered assaults
"Unfortunately, bad actors continue to profit from these activities and are leveraging AI-enhanced techniques to create more convincing phishing schemes, guaranteeing that this problem will continue to plague businesses," stated Michael Suby, vice president of research at IDC.

According to Acronis, the most well-known families of ransomware are still inflicting data loss and financial losses for businesses all over the world, even though the number of new groups and variants is declining.

The FBI attacked the ransomware group ALPHV in December 2023; during that time, the group compromised over 1,000 organizations, sought over $500 million in ransom payments, and was paid over $300 million.

It clarifies why there aren't enough reliable security tools to identify when zero-day vulnerabilities are being exploited.

Delays in updating insecure software allow threat actors to gain domain administrative access, uninstall security products, and compromise important data, leaving organizations open to attack.

Acronis is addressing concerns by providing training and certification programs through its MSP Academy for individuals who wish to improve their cybersecurity knowledge and abilities.