Dark web exposure increases risk of attack

The presence of any data relating to an organization on the dark web demonstrably increases its risk of a cyberattack.

This probably won't come as too much of a surprise but it's confirmed by new research from Searchlight Cyber, the dark web intelligence company, and the Marsh McLennan Cyber Risk Intelligence Center.

The report analyzed Searchlight's dark web dataset against a sample of 9,410 organizations with an overall breach rate of 3.7 percent from 2020 to 2023. Having compromised user accounts related to an organization on the dark web increases the likelihood of a cyber incident by 2.56 times.

The mention of the organization or data related to the organization on a dark web market increases it by 2.41 times, traffic originating from the organization’s network and connecting to the dark web by 2.11 times. Assets related to an organization that have been identified on the dark web mean a 2.05 increase.

Ben Jones, co-founder and CEO of Searchlight Cyber says:

The core finding of Marsh McLennan's analysis is that any data related to your organization on the dark web is highly correlated with your chance of a cyberattack. Cybercriminals plan their attacks on dark web forums, marketplaces, and in hidden communication channels, and the study has quantified the risk of each of these areas of dark web exposure for the first time.

If security teams can identify their exposure on the dark web they have a huge opportunity to proactively act, adjust their defenses, and effectively stop attacks before they are launched by cybercriminals. The first step is to gain visibility: to understand where the threat on the dark web is coming from, where the organization is being targeted, and continuously monitor to give themselves the best chance of identifying and stopping a cybersecurity incident.

The full report is available from the Searchlight site.

Image Credit: Wayne Williams