Description

The current threat landscape report by ReliaQuest discloses staggering trends in the hospitality and recreation industries, with a notable increase in cyberattacks. Ransomware attacks increased 43%, with 109 industry organizations having their pilfered information posted for sale on dark websites, an increase from 76 six months ago. The rise indicates the attractiveness of the sector to cyberactors, with its dependency on IoT devices and remote-access technology being a contributing factor. Even with fewer ransomware groups, those that exist have focused their attention on this industry, exploiting its expansion and visibility. Another worrying discovery was that 44% of phishing messages included credential harvesters, a technique to harvest large numbers of user credentials. Cybercriminals tend to use this tactic in combination with spoofed domains or social media profiles to lure victims into sharing sensitive data. This is especially troubling for sectors such as gambling, where transactions are common and enticing to attackers. The report emphasizes the need for increased awareness and improved email security to counter these threats. Remote external services were also attacked with a whopping 433% boost, fueled by a colossal brute-force attack in January 2025 on devices such as Palo Alto GlobalProtect and SonicWall NetExtender. This nearly 2.8 million IP address-compromised attack illustrates the weakness of remote-access technology. ReliaQuest recommends the use of multifactor authentication (MFA), conditional access policies, and secure coding for web applications to fortify defenses against these emerging threats. Monitoring and logging on a regular basis are also necessary to identify and thwart such attacks.