Global Incident Response Threat Report

Geopolitical tension is, once again, playing out in cyberspace.

According to VMware Carbon Black’s latest Global Incident Response Threat Report (GIRTR), top incident response (IR) professionals around the world say ongoing geopolitical tensions involving China, Russia, North Korea and Iran are leading to cyberattacks.

“The axis of evil in cyberspace is alive and well,” said Tom Kellermann, VMware Carbon Black’s head cybersecurity strategist.

According to VMware Carbon Black’s latest research, the majority of today’s cyberattacks now include tactics such as lateral movement, island hopping and destructive attacks. Advanced hacking capabilities and services for sale on the dark web compound the issue, as does an unprecedented collaboration among nation-states. These realities pose a tremendous risk to targets with decentralized systems protecting high-value assets, including money, intellectual property and state secrets.

Targets who fail to increase their defenses accordingly are paying an ever-steeper price, as the frequency of destructive attacks continues to climb, according to the research. Financial gain drove most attacks in 2019, the research found, but IR professionals said they are also concerned about these same tools being deployed to interfere with the U.S. elections in 2020.

This is the fourth edition of VMware Carbon Black’s semiannual Global Incident Response Threat Report, tracking the latest attack trends seen by leading IR firms. The report aggregates qualitative and quantitative input from 30 VMware Carbon Black IR partners for the latest edition.