The cybersecurity industry is rapidly growing every day. Although more resources are being deployed to counter cyber attacks, the nature of the industry still has a long way to go before we can, as a whole, catch up with these threats.

1. 95% of breached records came from only three industries in 2016

Government, retail, and technology. The reason isn’t necessarily because those industries are less diligent in their protection of customer records. They’re just very popular targets because of the high level of personal identifying information contained in their records.

2. There is a hacker attack every 39 seconds

A Clark School study at the University of Maryland is one of the first to quantify the near-constant rate of hacker attacks of computers with Internet access— every 39 seconds on average, affecting one in three Americans every year —and the non-secure usernames and passwords we use that give attackers more chance of success.

3. 43% of cyber attacks target small business

64% of companies have experienced web-based attacks.  62% experienced phishing & social engineering attacks. 59% of companies experienced malicious code and botnets and 51% experienced denial of service attacks.

4. The global average cost of a data breach is $3.9 million across SMBs

For most businesses this is sum is crippling – not only monetarily but in reputation. For public companies, the cost is much greater since more is at stake, on average a data breach at a publicly-traded company would cost $116 million.

5. Since COVID-19, the US FBI reported a 300% increase in reported cybercrimes

As if a pandemic wasn’t scary enough, hackers leveraged the opportunity to attack vulnerable networks as office work moved to personal homes.

6. More than 93% of healthcare organizations have experienced a data breach over the past three years

Also according to the Herjavec Group, 57% have had more than five data breaches during the same timeframe.