More Cyber-Attacks Occur on Weekends Than a Weekday, Study Reveals

Fortinet released its 28-page FortiGuard Labs Q2 2017 Global Threat Landscape Report on Aug. 21, providing insight drawn from over 3 million network devices and sensors within production environments. Overall, Fortinet’s data quantified 184 billion exploit detections during the quarter for an average daily volume of 1.8 billion daily detections. Some days, however, tend to have more detections than others, with approximately 44 percent of all detections coming on either a Saturday or a Sunday. Also of note is the fact that across the infrastructure where Fortinet’s sensors are deployed the majority of organizations’ data traffic is encrypted with Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security (SSL/TLS) over HTTPS connections. In this slide show, eWEEK takes a look at some of the highlights of the Fortinet FortiGuard Labs Q2 2017 Global Threat Landscape Report.

During the second quarter of 2017, Fortinet’s sensor network detected 184 billion exploit attempts, for an average of 1.8 billion per day.

Nearly 44 percent of all intrusion detection system (IDS) detections for exploits came on either a Saturday or a Sunday, with the average daily volume on weekends being twice that of weekdays.

According to Fortinet, more than two-thirds of firms experienced high or critical exploits in Q2 2017.

Over the course of the quarter, Fortinet reported 62 million malware detections. According to the report, 18 percent of organizations saw some form of mobile malware during the quarter.

According to Fortinet’s data, roughly 45 percent of firms detected only one type of botnet active in their environment, while 25 percent saw two unique botnets.

Approximately 3 percent of organizations had 10 or more unique botnet infections across the Fortinet study base. Looking at the industry verticals that were most likely to have 10 or more unique botnets, telco topped the list.

Looking at the daily traffic patterns, Fortinet found that across all surveyed industries, HTTPS encrypted traffic now represents the majority of data volume.