Clusit, Italy suffers 10% of the world's cyber attacks

In 2024, 3,541 cyber incidents were detected worldwide, with a 27.4% increase over the previous year. Italy remains a target, suffering 10% of global attacks, with news and multimedia being the most affected category (18% of the total). A quarter of incidents in the manufacturing sector worldwide were against Italian companies, as were a quarter of global attacks on the global transport and logistics sector. Over a third of incidents in Italy were caused by malware. This is the evidence contained in the annual report of Clusit, the Italian Association for Information Security.

The news and multimedia sector reached a negative record in 2024 with a single attack that compromised the data of 5 million people - comments Luca Bechelli, of the Clusit Steering Committee - It is emblematic how an IT technology when used prevalently in a sector can become an extremely attractive target for attackers who, by concentrating their investment, are certain to generate a huge amount of damage to society with a single attack campaign".

In Italy, the percentage of incidents classified as high impact was higher in 2024 than the global average (53% versus 50%), while critical severity incidents were 9%, compared to 29% globally. Medium severity incidents were much more frequent (38% versus 22% globally). The phenomenon of hacktivism is growing, globally and in our country, as is that of information warfare - a type of attack exacerbated by the geopolitical situation.

Returning to the global situation, according to Clusit, nine out of 10 incidents were cybercriminal, i.e. to extort money from victims. Phishing and social engineering grew by 33% compared to 2023, in Europe there was a +67% increase in significant incidents. The exploitation of vulnerabilities, both known and unknown (zero day), accounted for 15% of the total.

In addition to observing a constant growth in the global frequency of accidents worldwide, the researchers also noted a worsening of the consequences. "In 2024 - the report states - a percentage of accidents with serious or very serious impacts equal to 79% of the total was confirmed (it was 80% in 2023 and 50% in 2020), outlining a further multiplication of damages".

"The global picture is decidedly worrying: on the one hand, the protection levels of organizations seem insufficient, on the other, attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated thanks also to the use of Artificial Intelligence", says Anna Vaccarelli, president of Clusit.