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Exploits Aimed at Corporate Users on the Rise, Study Suggests

By Marcos Colon

The results of a new study by security firm Kaspersky Lab points to cyber criminals shifting their tactics and focusing on high-value victims.

After analyzing threats identified and blocked by its antimalware solutions in 2016, experts at Kaspersky Lab noted an overall drop in attacks against individual users, from 5.5 million in 2015 to 4.3 million users in 2016.

The report, however, did discover that assaults aimed at systems used by corporate users did surge by nearly 30 percent, from 540,000 in 2015 to 690,000 in 2016. The study, titled “Attacks with Exploits: From Everyday Threats to Targeted Campaigns,” classifies users that are active on an organization’s system that is protected by Kaspersky Lab’s enterprise antimalware solution as “corporate users.”

Given the reduction of exploit kits in 2016, the study suggests that cyber criminals may be investing in exploits that target a smaller, but more valuable, pool of victims; corporate users.

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