Fortinet Global Threat Report First Half 2023

Keypoints

• Cybersecurity reports from major vendors like Fortinet typically comprise sections including an executive summary, threat activity overview, long-term trend analysis, tactical insights, vulnerability assessments, and strategic recommendations.
• These reports provide key statistics such as attack prevalence, vulnerability targeting, and threat actor activity, with notable data for the first half of 2023 showing 41 active APT groups and ransomware activity increasing 13-fold since the start of the year.
• Analysis of attack techniques reveals a shift towards more targeted, sophisticated methods, such as exploitation of high EPSS vulnerabilities, process injection, credential dumping, and remote code execution, emphasizing the need for prioritized patch management.
• Recurring themes include the escalation of organized cybercrime efforts, the persistence of botnets, and the evolving tactics of nation-state actors like Turla, with a focus on areas like ICS/OT attacks and custom malware deployment.
• Significant findings stress the importance of integrating predictive scoring systems like EPSS to anticipate and prevent exploitation, as well as leveraging frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK for systematic threat detection and response planning.
• Overall, these reports reinforce that while threats continue to evolve rapidly, organizations can strengthen defenses by staying informed, prioritizing vulnerabilities with high exploit potential, and adopting advanced detection methodologies.