A good tenth company in Germany was affected by an IT security incident such as hacking in 2022. These are successful cyber attacks or other security-related incidents such as acts of sabotage or hardware theft. This is shown by an Ipsos survey commissioned by the TÜV Association among 501 companies with ten or more employees. In absolute numbers, this corresponds to around 50,000 incidents in this company size class.
Organized hacking by gangs
From the perspective of those surveyed, the greatest danger comes from organized cyber crime: 57 percent feel threatened by organized hacker gangs. 27 percent each see state-organized economic espionage or politically motivated actors as a major danger. 22 percent fear insider perpetrators who have internal knowledge of a company and can exploit it in an attack.
According to the survey results, the war in Ukraine has greatly increased the risk of cyber attacks in the German economy. This is the opinion of 58 percent of companies in Germany. And 16 percent have recorded more attacks or attempted attacks on their company since the outbreak of the war. Large companies with 250 or more employees are most affected at 28 percent. This is followed by medium-sized companies with 20 percent (50 to 249 employees) and small companies with eleven percent (ten to 49 employees).
Phishing, ransomware and co
By far the most common attack method is phishing: emails that are used to steal passwords or distribute malware. A phishing attack was successful in 62 percent of affected companies. This is followed by ransomware attacks in which IT systems are hacked, data is encrypted and companies are then blackmailed (29 percent). Another popular scam is the manipulation of employees, so-called “social engineering” (26 percent).
42 percent of companies suffered financial losses, services for employees (38 percent) or customers (29 percent) were unavailable, production was down (13 percent) or sensitive data was stolen (13 percent). A good half of companies have increased their spending on cyber security slightly or even significantly in the past two years (52 percent). Investments primarily go into modern hardware and software.
78 percent have decommissioned outdated devices, 71 percent have purchased secure hardware and 55 percent have introduced new cyber security software. 63 percent have improved the IT security of networked machines and systems. In addition, companies invest in their own know-how: 72 percent seek advice from external experts and 51 percent train their employees.
Source:
Press release
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