Cyberattack dwell times decline

Overall cyberattack median dwell times have declined from 10 days in 2022 to eight days in the first half of 2023, BleepingComputer reports. While non-ransomware intrusions saw dwell times increase by two days during the first six months of the year, ransomware intrusions, which accounted for most of the cyberattacks this year, had median dwell times drop by four days during the same period, a Sophos report showed. Moreover, 43.42% of attacks involved data exfiltration, while 9.2% were confirmed not to result in data theft, representing increases of 1.3% and 1.32%, respectively, over the previous year. The findings also showed that most cyberattacks have been deployed on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, although ransomware attacks have been mostly conducted on Fridays and Saturdays. Meanwhile, 95% of attacks were found to involve remote desktop protocol, with internal activity accounting for most of its usage, prompting researchers to recommend more robust RDP security as a priority for organizations.