94 billion threats blocked in 2021, says Trend Micro

Cybersecurity company Trend Micro says threat detections increased 42% year on year, as malicious actors stepped up their attacks in 2021.

The company said its Smart Protection Network (SPN) stopped 94.2 billion* cyber threats from reaching consumer, government and business customers in the last calendar year.

The threats were detected by more than five trillion threat queries, a 36% year-on-year increase from queries in 2020. Trend Micro’s SPN leverages over 250 million sensors across the broadest attack surface globally to proactively protect organisations and individuals faster.

"Trend Micro detects threats across endpoints, mobile, servers, IoT/IIoT, home networks, messaging, network, web and cloud environments," said Mick McCluney, Technical Director ANZ, Trend Micro.

"That's a testament to our continuous effort to expand attack surface protections and improve our advanced detection technologies deployed to 500,000 commercial and government accounts and millions of consumer customers. But it also underscores the mounting threat from bad actors, as outlined in our 2022 predictions report."

Despite a double-digit surge in detected cyber threats from 2020 to 2021, Trend Micro blocked 66% fewer ransomware attacks over the period, reinforcing the theory that these threats are becoming more targeted. Another contributing factor in this decrease is that more ransomware attacks are being blocked in earlier stages before being deployed. Over 14 million attacks were proactively stopped in 2021 before they could impact customers.

The company said security teams must be prepared for another onslaught of threats in 2022 and predicts that IoT systems, global supply chains, cloud environments and DevOps functions will come under increasing scrutiny from attackers over the coming year. It recommends enhanced risk-based patching, XDR, server hardening, Zero Trust, network monitoring and DevSecOps practices as critical acts in preventing spiralling cyber risk in 2022.

*The figure stands at 94,289,585,240 threats.

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