In its annual digital defense report covering trends from July 2023 to July 2024, Microsoft highlights a worrying increase in cyber attacks.

The report reveals that Microsoft users face 600 million attacks per day, from both cybercriminals and state actors, also highlighting how cyber operations are deeply linked to geopolitical conflicts.

“To effectively combat the rising tide of cyber threats, we must not only strengthen our digital defenses at all levels, but also foster a deep and sustained commitment to cybersecurity principles. This commitment must involve everyone from individual users to corporate leaders and heads of state to ensure a united front against malicious cyber activity," said Anna Bar Lev, senior manager of Go To Market security for Southeast Europe at Microsoft .

Microsoft saw a 2,75x increase in ransomware attacks compared to last year, but the percentage of organizations that ended up being "blackmailed" (reaching the data encryption stage) has more than tripled over the past two years.

Attackers still rely on predictable human behavior, such as choosing easy passwords and reusing them across multiple websites - making them easy victims of phishing attacks. Password attacks account for 99% of all user identity attacks.

Cyber-enabled financial fraud is on the rise globally, with new trends in payment fraud and misuse of legitimate services for phishing and malicious activities.

An alarming form of fraud is techscam, which deceives users by presenting legitimate services or technical support and false advertising. Techscam fraud traffic increased by 400% from 2021 to 2023, far outpacing the 180% increase in viruses and 30% in phishing, highlighting the need for stronger protections.

DDoS attacks continued to evolve. In the second half of the year, Microsoft mitigated 1.25 million DDoS attacks, which is a fourfold increase compared to last year.

Microsoft Threat Intelligence now tracks more than 1500 unique threat groups, including more than 600 government threats, 300 criminal groups, 200 influencer groups, and hundreds more.

A significant increase in phishing attacks using homoglyph domains (fake, similar links) has been observed, with Microsoft tracking up to 10.000 of them.

Microsoft states that governments should impose penalties on malicious activity to prevent attacks. Current international standards in cyberspace lack effective enforcement, resulting in continued aggressive state-sponsored activities.