I’m back from vacation!  April Fools!  Needing a quick topic to cover while still on vacation, I found this article related to cybersecurity statistics you need to know for 2021 (hat tip to Donna Medrek of Bluestar for originally posting it on LinkedIn) and I thought I would share some of them.  Here’s the catch – all of them are real stats except for one.  Can you figure out the one stat where I’m just “fooling”?  Answer at the bottom, see if you can guess it without looking!

These are stats from the last five years, by the way.  Here they are:

1. 58% of companies have over 1,000 inactive user accounts.
2. 86% of breaches in 2020 were financially motivated.
3. Global cybercrime is expected to inflict a total of $6 trillion in damages in 2021.
4. 59% of buyers are likely to avoid companies that suffered from a cyberattack in the past year.
5. Global ransomware damage costs are predicted to reach $20 billion by 2021.
6. 70% of consumers believe that businesses aren’t doing enough to secure their personal information.
7. 90% of UK cybersecurity breaches in 2019 were caused by human error.
8. 93.6% of malware observed in 2019 was polymorphic (i.e., has the ability to constantly modify its code to evade detection).
9. From 2018 to 2019 there was a 125% increase in malware targeting Windows 10.
10. The likelihood of organized cybercrime entities being detected and prosecuted is estimated to be as low as 0.05% in the U.S.
11. 15,224,388 new malware and potentially unwanted applications were found in January 2021 alone.
12. The majority of sites that host malware are from the US (61.22%).
13. In 2018, 15% of phishing sites used HTTPS to trick the user into thinking the site was safe; by 2019 the percentage had risen to 27%.
14. 53% of companies found over 1,000 sensitive files open to every employee.
15. From 2018 to 2019 there was a 640% increase in phishing attempts.

So, what do you think?  Do any of these cybersecurity statistics you need to know for 2021 surprise you?  Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Which stat is the fake one?

The

Answer

Is

This

One:

It’s #9!  The stat is correct, but it applies to Windows 7, not Windows 10.  As I discussed back in November, about one in five of you is still using Windows 7.  If that’s you, it’s time to upgrade!

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by my employer, my partners or my clients. eDiscovery Today is made available solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Today should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.