Cyber attacks have been around for a long time. However, these attacks have become more harmful and happen more often these days.
Over the past couple of years, the number of cyber attacks have significantly grown both in sophistication and volume.
How many cyber attacks happen per day? This is the topic of the day. The following will discuss cyber attacks and how many occur per day.
Why have we seen such a massive uptake in cyber attacks?
The global pandemic became a catalyst for the uptake in higher levels of digital usage for the workplace, at home, for shopping, in the consumption of entertainment, and almost everything we do every day.
Therefore, the massively digital world became more appealing to malevolent hackers.
Besides discussing the number of cyber attacks per day, we will also briefly discuss who is most vulnerable, and provide a few examples to show the urgency in being more proactive about our online activities.
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How Many Cyber Attacks Happen per Day in 2024?
The most recent data revealed that there are 30,000 global cyber attacks occurring each day.
So, every 24 hours, there are people with malicious intentions attacking websites.
Moreover, an average of about 24,000 malicious mobile apps are blocked each day online. Over 500,000 new traces of malware are detected per day.
Over 333.2 billion spam emails are sent each day with the intent of illicitly obtaining personal data from consumers.
Additionally, every 11 seconds a ransomware attack occurs, with roughly 628 million instances of this kind of cyber attack each year.
These figures may seem overwhelming and scary, but it’s all true.
The facts and figures show us the urgency of using sound protection on our computers, mobile devices, and any internet-connected device.
Cyber Attacks by Region
We know now that per day, tens of thousands of cyber attacks occur all over the world. Where do they happen the most?
Data from 2021 showed that the following countries experience the highest numbers of cyber attacks per day.
- The United Kingdom is where 4,783 victims per every one million users of the Internet experience some form of cyber attack.
- The United States is second to the United Kingdom with 1,494 victims per one million users each day.
- Canada reported 174 victims per one million users of cyber attacks per day.
- Australia recorded 102 victims per one million users of cyber attacks in its country.
- Greece had a reported 72 Internet users per one million users who suffered cyber attacks.
- South Africa said they have 52 victims per one million users per day.
- The Netherlands had 41 victims per one million users of cyber attacks.
- France cyber attack victims accounted for 33 per one million Internet users.
- Germany claimed their share of 18 victims per one million users who suffered cyber attacks.
- Mexico reported 16 victims per one million users who experienced some form of cyber attack per day.
Remember that each of these were per one million Internet users per day in each country.
We also know that these numbers grew exponentially between 2021 and 2023.
What’s the Cost of Cyber Attacks Involving Fraud?
While not all cyber attacks involve fraud, those that do cost an astronomical amount of money to those attacked.
In 2021, the costs of cyber attacks involving fraud accounted for nearly $4 billion.
These are the following areas of fraud where these costs occurred, in no particular order.
However, the highest cost came with investment fraud with a total of $1.4 billion.
- Investment fraud among an average of 20,600 victims
- Online payment fraud among an average of 93,400 victims
- Romance fraud among an average of 24,300 victims
- Credit card fraud among an average of 16,800 victims
- Lottery frauds among an average of 6,000 victims
- Government impersonation fraud among an average of 11,300 victims
- Identity theft among an average of 51,600 victims
- Tech support frauds among an average of 23,900 victims
This represents the costs from fraud-related cyber attacks alone. It doesn’t include the cost of the various forms of cybercrimes.
What Are the Costs Involved in The Most Common Forms of Cybercrimes?
Cyber attacks come in a variety of types. This will explain the most common forms of cyber attacks.
We will combine the costs over all of these types of cyber attacks.
Spoofing victimized an average of 18,500 people/businesses over 2021.
DoS (Denial of Service) victimized an average of 1,100 people/businesses over 2021.
Ransomware victimized an average of 3,700 people/businesses over 2021.
Phishing victimized an average of 324,000 people/businesses over 2021.
Online harassment victimized an average of 12,300 people/businesses over 2021.
Malware attacks victimized an average of 800 people/businesses over 2021.
Extortion victimized an average of 39,400 people/businesses over 2021.
The total costs for each category of cyber attack accounted for over $245 million in 2021.
We are sure that the costs have risen since. Spoofing came at the highest cost of $82 million in 2021. Phishing affected the most people/businesses.
What Are the Largest Cyber Attacks?
There are several massive cyber attacks that occurred among some well-known organizations and websites since 2016. Here are the top five.
- In 2016, a cyber attack cost Yahoo over $3.5 billion
- In 2017, $711 million was the cost of the cyber attack on Onliner Spambot
- In 2018, Aadhaar lost $1.1 billion to one cyber attack. Also, Twitter lost $330 million from one cyber attack
- In 2020, Microsoft had to spend $250 million because of a cyber attack
- In 2021, the Facebook cyber attack cost the company $533 million
These are a few of the largest cyber attacks in history, so far.
Conclusion
As you can see, cyber attacks come in various forms and attack businesses and people alike.
According to statistics, small and medium sized businesses are the most vulnerable to cyber attacks.
However, let’s not neglect that huge corporations and individuals are also attacked daily.
We have likely all gotten a spam email that involved phishing, which can result in stealing your identity, passwords, etc.
Just by clicking the link in the email or by opening an attachment. Phishing is a common email scam where malicious intent is involved.
After reading this article, you should see the gravity of the importance of having antivirus programs, malware detection, and other device protections in place.
This is especially true for businesses, but individuals can’t neglect to protect themselves.
Also, if you’re not using MFA (multi-factor authentication), you should even if it’s just for logging into your email.
How many cyber attacks happen per day?
When you add them all up, you can estimate that at least 333 billion cyber attacks of different types are attempted, some successful each day.
