Germany-based insurer Allianz Life on Sunday confirmed that it was the victim of a cyber security breach and data of the majority of its 1.4 million customers in North America has been compromised.
The company, a part of the global financial services conglomerate Allianz Group, is the latest among the fast-growing list of big corporations – a large number of which are household names – falling victim to cyber attacks.
Tech giant Microsoft being hit by a wave of activity also made headlines this month, with the list of its affected clients still growing.
Cyber attacks are becoming more sophisticated, especially with artificial intelligence providing offenders with more ways of infiltrating systems and breaching layers of security.
About 560,000 new malware pieces are discovered on average every day, according to San Francisco-based security company DeepStrike, which has an office in Dubai.
The National takes a look at some of the biggest names that have been targeted by the digital underworld, on a monthly basis this year.
January: Starting with a bang
Twenty-one data breaches were recorded in January, according to the industry watchdog Cyber Management Alliance (CMA), most notably an attack on the UN’s International Civil Aviation Organisation and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, which revealed at the time it was investigating a new threat.
Seven ransomware attacks were detected during the month, including on Japanese watch maker Casio and India’s Tata Technologies.
February: ‘Just the tip of the iceberg’
Each day presents new threats and February escalated worries in the cyber realm, the CMA said.
Five ransomware attacks were recorded during the month, while data breach-related incidents were also reported. Among the victims were companies including US delivery service GrubHub. The attack impacted personal information of a part of its customer base.
However, arguably the most damaging attack was the one that befell on decentralised money lender zkLend, which said it lost $9.5 million worth of crypto to hackers – continuing the concerns over digital assets despite some “acts of Genius” from the US government to regulate them.
March: X takes the big spot
Not even a companies run by the world’s wealthiest person are safe. Elon Musk’s X – formerly Twitter – fell victim to what he described as a “massive” breach, which was later was termed a distributed denial-of-service attack.
That was one of 13 cyber attacks for the month, plus six ransomware incidents that included one that hit Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur International Airport, wherein the government rejected a $10 million ransom demand.
Meanwhile, 18 data breaches were recorded, including one at Oracle in which six million data records were taken.
April: No fooling around
Major British retailer Marks & Spencer headlined April’s cyber attacks, hitting its deliveries, online transactions and gift card processing.
Twenty major data breaches were recorded by the CMA, including one from the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which revealed the discovery of unauthorised access to emails of employees and senior executives, and Britain’s Royal Mail, involving about 144GB of stolen data.
On the other hand, 11 ransomware attacks were noted – although six were from inconclusive sources.
May: Coinbase and retail bonanza
Retail majors Coca-Cola, M&S peer Harrods, Adidas, Victoria’s Secret and Peter Green Chilled, a logistics company that serves British grocery chains, all suffered one form of attack.
However, the most notable was the attack on crypto platform Coinbase, which said an “unknown threat actor” demanded a $20 million ransom. The company offered the same bounty to identify the extortionist.
May was, by far, the most busy month in terms of attacked, with 20 and 21 recorded incidents for data breaches and cyber attacks, respectively, according to CMA data.
June: ‘Damaging as ever’
Aside from six ransomware attacks, June was a month when retailers remained a prime target, including outdoor gear maker North Face and luxury brand Cartier.
The big names that suffered include attacks include Washington Post, where a cyber attack compromised its journalists’ accounts, and Canada’s WestJet, where flight operations were disrupted.
