Zscaler’s 2021 Encrypted Assaults Report Reveals 314% Spike in HTTPS Threats

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Key findings
Threats over HTTPS have elevated greater than 314 p.c year-over-year, exceeding 250% development for the second straight 12 months.
Assaults on tech firms elevated by 2,300 p.c year-over-year; assaults on retail and wholesale firms elevated by 800 p.c.
Healthcare and authorities assaults noticed a lower in assaults year-over-year.
The UK, U.S., India, Australia, and France are the highest 5 targets of encrypted assaults.
Malware is up 212 p.c, and phishing is up 90 p.c, whereas cryptomining assaults are down 20 p.c.
SAN JOSE, October 28, 2021 — Zscaler, Inc. (NASDAQ: ZS), the chief in cloud safety, in the present day introduced the discharge of its annual State of Encrypted Assaults Report, which tracked and analyzed over 20 billion threats blocked over HTTPS, a protocol initially designed for safe communication over networks. This 12 months’s research discovered a rise of greater than 314 p.c year-over-year throughout geographical areas that embrace APAC, Europe, and North America, underscoring the necessity for a zero belief safety mannequin and larger site visitors inspection than most firms can obtain with legacy firewall-based safety fashions.
Zscaler’s Zero Belief Trade analyzes greater than 190 billion each day transactions, extracting over 300 trillion indicators which offers unmatched visibility to enterprise information at scale. ThreatlabZ analysis group leveraged these giant information units to offer distinctive insights into safety dangers posed by encrypted channels throughout key industries. Seven of the industries within the research skilled larger assault charges from threats in SSL and TLS site visitors, whereas final 12 months’s most-targeted business, healthcare, noticed a lower of 27 p.c since January 2021. Conversely, the expertise business was tormented by threats at a price a lot larger than different kinds of companies, accounting for 50 p.c of assaults.
In in the present day’s enterprise, greater than 80 p.c of internet-bound site visitors is encrypted, which signifies that enterprises face the distinctive problem of implementing constant safety for all of their distant customers. Cybercriminals are more and more subtle of their techniques, and so they’re utilizing encrypted channels at numerous levels of malware and ransomware assaults.
“Most enterprise IT and safety groups acknowledge this actuality however usually battle to implement SSL/TLS inspection insurance policies as a result of a scarcity of compute assets and/or privateness issues,” mentioned Deepen Desai, CISO and VP Safety Analysis and Operations at Zscaler. “Consequently, encrypted channels create a major blind spot of their safety postures. Zscaler’s new report on the state of encrypted assaults demonstrates that the best technique to forestall encrypted assaults is with a scalable, cloud-based proxy structure to examine all encrypted site visitors, which is important to a holistic zero belief safety technique.”
Cybercrime at an all-time excessive
Between January 2021 and September 2021, Zscaler blocked greater than 20 billion threats over HTTPS, growing greater than 314 p.c from the earlier 12 months. Cybercriminals are getting more and more savvy with their assaults and have benefited from affiliated networks and malware-as-a-service instruments accessible on the darkish net.
Whereas cybercriminals can use numerous assault sorts to cover in encrypted site visitors, malicious content material represented a staggering 91 p.c of assaults, a 212 p.c enhance over final 12 months. In distinction, cryptomining malware is down 20 p.c, reflecting a broader shift within the assault developments, with ransomware turning into a extra profitable possibility.
Tech business beneath siege
The report discovered that assaults on tech, retail, and wholesale firms noticed a major enhance in threats. Assaults on expertise firms elevated by a staggering 2,300 p.c, and retail and wholesale noticed assaults enhance by over 800 p.c. As extra retailers provide digital procuring choices in the course of the 2021 vacation procuring season, cybercriminals are anticipated to be focusing on extra ecommerce options and digital cost platforms with malware and ransomware assaults. This has been exacerbated by the sudden have to help distant employees with distant connectivity to teleconferencing, SaaS-based apps, and public cloud workloads.
Tech firms are additionally a beautiful goal as a result of their position within the provide chain. A profitable supply-chain assault like Kaseya and SolarWinds can provide attackers entry to a trove of consumer info. Moreover, because the world begins its return to regular, and as companies and public occasions are opening up across the globe, many staff are nonetheless working in comparatively insecure environments. Gaining access to important point-of-sale methods is extraordinarily enticing to cybercriminals because it opens the door to large earnings.
Crucial providers see a decline
After being a prime goal in 2020, assaults on healthcare organizations decreased by 27 p.c in 2021. Equally, assaults on authorities organizations decreased by 10 p.c. Ransomware assaults that focused important providers, together with the Colonial Pipeline assault and the ransomware assault on the Well being Providers Govt of Eire, have caught the eye of the very best ranges of legislation enforcement, together with the White Home, which not too long ago signed an Govt Order to enhance the nation’s cybersecurity.
“After being the 2 most ceaselessly focused sectors in 2020, healthcare and authorities organizations had an immense sense of urgency to revamp their safety postures with trendy architectures, that are largely based mostly on zero belief. There was additionally elevated authorities scrutiny and a legislation enforcement crackdown on cybercriminal teams in response to high-profile assaults in opposition to important providers equivalent to Colonial Pipeline,” mentioned Desai. “Because of these two components, we have now seen a lower in assaults on healthcare and authorities organizations this 12 months.”
Extra international locations focused
Zscaler ThreatLabz noticed assaults in over 200 international locations and territories worldwide, together with small international locations that aren’t widespread targets equivalent to islands throughout the Caribbean. As well as, a rise in work-from-anywhere has led to staff branching out from the standard big tech hubs like, the San Francisco Bay Space, New York, London, Paris, Sydney.
The 5 most-targeted international locations of encrypted assaults embrace the U.Okay. (5,446,549,767), U.S. (2,674,879,625), India (2,169,135,553), Australia (1,806,003,182), and France (519,251,819).
As a complete, Europe led the way in which with 7,234,747,361 assaults, with APAC (4,924,732,36) and North America (2,778,360,051) rounding out the highest three.
Defend your enterprise
As organizations shift to help new, digitally enabled working fashions, it’s more and more essential to make sure that their property and site visitors to these property are safe. To decrease the risk from encrypted assaults, Zscaler ThreatLabz recommends a zero belief safety technique that enables organizations to:
Forestall Compromise: Present constant safety for all customers and all areas to make sure everybody has the identical degree of safety on a regular basis, whether or not they’re at residence, at headquarters, or overseas. Use a cloud-native, proxy-based structure to examine all site visitors for each consumer and decrypt, detect, and stop threats that could be hiding in HTTPS site visitors.
Forestall Lateral Motion: Use zero belief structure with deception to scale back your assault floor and stop lateral motion by cybercriminals. The sort of structure makes purposes invisible to attackers whereas permitting licensed customers to instantly entry wanted assets and never all the community.
Forestall Knowledge Loss: Quarantine unknown assaults or compromised apps in an AI-driven sandbox to cease patient-zero malware and ransomware. Not like with firewall-based passthrough approaches, this design holds all suspicious content material for evaluation, guaranteeing that breach makes an attempt are stopped earlier than they’re able to entry delicate methods and steal business-critical info.
To obtain the total report, see the 2021 State of Encrypted Assaults.
Methodology
The ThreatLabz group evaluated information from the Zscaler safety cloud, which displays over 190 billion transactions each day throughout the globe. Zscaler blocked over 20.7 billion threats transmitted through encrypted channels over a nine-month window from January 2021 via September 2021.
About Zscaler
Zscaler (NASDAQ: ZS) accelerates digital transformation so clients could be extra agile, environment friendly, resilient, and safe. The Zscaler Zero Belief Trade protects hundreds of shoppers from cyberattacks and information loss by securely connecting customers, units, and purposes in any location. Distributed throughout greater than 150 information facilities globally, the SASE-based Zero Belief Trade is the world’s largest in-line cloud safety platform.
Zscaler™ and the opposite logos listed at https://www.zscaler.com/authorized/logos are both (i) registered logos or service marks or (ii) logos or service marks of Zscaler, Inc. in america and/or different international locations. Every other logos are the properties of their respective homeowners.

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