Ah...Traditions!
It's good to have some.
And it's also good to laugh at bad things sometimes!
That's why we're starting by reading and compiling the most interesting (and frightening) facts about cybersecurity in 2021.

Note: Most of the data shown below are taken from the Ponemon Institute and Verizon DBIR 2021 reports, and other sources are linked directly in the text.

Let's dive into the spooky facts ! 👻

Humans cause 85% of breaches

Humans are the weakest link. Human error causes 85% of cybersecurity breaches: email misdelivery, poor password hygiene, inadequate or deployed patching, and poor access control.

+10% rise in data breach cost

The cost of data breaches is increasing. In 2021, the average total cost of a data breach increased by nearly 10% yearly, the most significant single-year cost increase in the last seven years. It now sits at $4.24 million.

The highest ransom paid is...$40 million

Ransomware can be really expensive. One of the biggest insurance companies in the US, CNA Financial, paid $40M in ransom after being locked out of its network for two weeks in March.

Cyber crimes represent 1% of world GDP

Cybercrime is a fast-growing international industry. Cybercrime costs the world economy more than $1 trillion, or just over 1% of global GDP. This put global losses at close to $600 billion. The annual cost of cybercrime will be $10.5 trillion by 2025. For instance, one of the leading hacker groups, DarkSide, reportedly accumulated $90M in Bitcoins in the total amount of ransoms from 47 Bitcoin wallets.

7,27% fall in stock prices following a breach incident

Cyber attack impact stock market. Stock prices average 7.27% lower following a breach. Analysis of the closing share prices of 28 New York Stock Exchange-listed companies showed that they hit their lowest point nearly 14 market days after a breach. This also equates to -4.18% NASDAQ underperformance.

66% of CISOs feel unprepared to cope with coming attacks

CISOs feel unprepared. 66% of CISOs feel they're unprepared to cope with a cyberattack, and they also experience a lack of understanding from other C-executives.

A cyber-attack occurs every 39 seconds

There is an ever-growing number of attacks. Cybercrimes increased by nearly 300% last year following the COVID-19 outbreak, and a cyber attack occurs every 39 seconds.

Ransomware occurrence increases by about 10% per year

Ransomware attacks are increasing and becoming more expensive. The occurrence has risen by about 10% year on year, with the average cost now at $4.62M, also rising from last year.

44% of cyber professionals feel the skill shortage is getting worse

Skill shortages and competition are increasing. 44% of surveyed cybersecurity professionals feel like the skill shortage in their field is only getting worse. 95% of the respondents haven't noticed any improvement at all. About 33% of cybersecurity respondents said their organization could be doing much more to address the cybersecurity skills shortage.

212 days to identify a breach on average 

Identifying a breach takes way too long. In 2021, the average time to identify and contain a breach was 212 days, plus 75 days to contain it. That's a total of 287 days, on average.

Of course, the longer you take to identify and contain the breach, the costlier it is. Thus, data breaches with a lifecycle superior to 200 days had an average cost of $4.87M, compared to $3.61M when under 200 days.