Pierluigi Paganini October 22, 2020

According to the ENISA Threat Landscape Report 2020, cyberattacks are becoming more sophisticated, targeted, and in many cases undetected.

I’m proud to present the ENISA Threat Landscape Report 2020, the annual report published by the ENISA that provides insights on the evolution of cyber threats for the period January 2019-April 2020.

The 8th annual ENISA Threat Landscape (ETL) report was compiled by the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA), with the support of the European Commission, EU Member States and the CTI Stakeholders Group.

It is an amazing work that identifies and evaluates the top cyber threats for the period January 2019-April 2020.

This year the report has a different format that could allow the readers to focus on the threat of interest. The publication is divided into 22 different reports, which are available in both pdf form and ebook form.

The report provides details on threats that characterized the period of the analysis and highlights the major change from the 2018 threat landscape as the COVID-19-led transformation of the digital environment.

“During the pandemic, cyber criminals have been seen advancing their capabilities, adapting quickly and targeting relevant victim groups more effectively. (Infographic – Threat Landscape Mapping during COVID-19). states the report.

The ETL report provides strategic and technical analysis of the events, it was created to provide relevant information to both technical and non-technical readers.

For a better understanding of how the ETL is structured, we recommend the initial reading of “The Year in Review” report, the following table could help readers to focus on the section of their interest included in the publication.

The report highlights the importance of cyber threat intelligence to respond to increasingly automated attacks leveraging automated tools and skills.

Another element of concern is the diffusion of IoT devices, in many cases, smart objects are exposed online without protection.

Below the main trends reported in the document:

• Attack surface in cybersecurity continues to expand as we are entering a new phase of the digital transformation.
• There will be a new social and economic norm after the COVID-19 pandemic even more dependent on a secure and reliable cyberspace.
• The use of social media platforms in targeted attacks is a serious trend and reaches different domains and types of threats.
• Finely targeted and persistent attacks on highvalue data (e.g. intellectual property and state secrets) are being meticulously planned and executed by state-sponsored actors.
• Massively distributed attacks with a short duration and wide impact are used with multiple objectives such as credential theft.
• The motivation behind the majority of cyberattacks is still financial.
• Ransomware remains widespread with costly consequences to many organisations.
• Still many cybersecurity incidents go unnoticed or take a long time to be detected.
• With more security automation, organisations will be invest more in preparedness using Cyber Threat Intelligence as its main capability.
• The number of phishing victims continues to grow since it exploits the human dimension being the weakest link.

Let me close with the Top Threats 2020, for each threat the report includes detailed information on trends and observed evolution.

Enjoy it!

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, ENISA Threat Landscape Report 2020)

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