ENISA, the EU Cybersecurity Agency, has published the sixth issue of its annual ENISA Threat Landscape report. This includes an assessment and analysis of the cyber threats reported during 2017.
“The ENISA Threat Landscape provides a prioritised list of threats based on over 350 information sources in such a way that the important trends can be understood not only by industry professionals, but by decision makers in a wide variety of roles. It is a valuable record of what has happened and a unique tool in predicting what is yet to come,” said Prof. Dr. Udo Helmbrecht, Executive Director of ENISA.
This year, ENISA improved readability and usability of its report and has launched a web application containing information on the top 15 cyber threats encountered in 2017. The application is available at etl.enisa.europa.eu .
In addition to the top 15 cyber threats, the ENISA Threat Landscape 2017 covers threat agents, common attacks, and trends.
The main trends in the cyberthreat landscape are identified as:
- Complexity of attacks and sophistication of malicious actions in cyberspace continue to increase.
- Threat agent of all types have advanced in obfuscation, that is, hiding their trails.
- Malicious infrastructures continue their transformation towards multipurpose configurable functions including anonymization, encryption and detection evasion.
- Monetization of cybercrime is becoming the main motive of threat agents, in particular cyber-criminals. They take advantage of anonymity offered by the use digital currencies.
- State-sponsored actors are one of the most omnipresent malicious agents in cyberspace. They are a top concern of commercial and governmental defenders.
- Cyber-war is entering dynamically into the cyberspace creating increased concerns to critical infrastructure operators, especially in areas that suffer some sort of cyber crises.
- Skills and capabilities are the main concerns for organizations. The need for related training programmes and educational curricula remains almost unanswered.
The full ETL 2017 report can be found here.
