Global retailers are increasingly being targeted by cyber criminals, with new data revealing 4.8 billion malware incidents in the first half of 2019, with average breach going undetected for 228 days.

Data collected from one million sensors in 215 countries and territories by cloud security platform SonicWall identified a 15 per cent increase in the number of ransomware attacks for the first six months of 2019, totalling 110.9 million incidents.

The average time taken by retailers to contain a breach once it had been identified was 83 days.

In addition, the data suggested that cyber criminals are finding new routes to stealing data and breaching retail systems, with a 45 per cent increase in never-before-seen attacks in the previous 12 months.

SonicWall’s sensors recorded a 76 per cent rise in the number of encrypted threats in the first half of 2019, coupled with a 51 per cent jump in the use of infected PDFs in never-before-seen attacks, compared to 47 per cent of Microsoft Office files.

In addition, as businesses and consumers continue to connect devices to the internet without proper security measures, Internet of Things (IoT) devices have been increasingly leveraged by cyber criminals to dispense malware.

In the first half of 2019, SonicWall observed a 55 per cent increase in IoT attacks, a number that outpaces the first two quarters of the previous year.

A recent report from IBM and the Ponemon Institute found that the average cost of a breach was $1.84 million, equivalent to $119 lost for each customer data record breached.

SonicWall’s global threat network identified 28 million attacks blocked and 140,000 malware samples collected every day. In addition there were two trillion intrusion attempts across global sensors.

Terry Greer-King, vice president EMEA of SonicWall said:"The retail sector is under constant threat of cyber attacks due to its vast repository of customer data, which cyber criminals steal in order to sell in the Dark Web.

He added: "Especially in the upcoming peak shopping season, cyber criminals are likely to amp up their attacks on retailers, hoping to capitalise on their increased activity. With many retailers relying on the last quarter of the year to boost their earnings, the potential damage increases exponentially."

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