The agency has published its report for this year

Dec 12, 2013 09:48 GMT  ·  By

The European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) has published its 2013 Threat Landscape Report. The study focuses on the top cyber threats, cyber adversaries and trends in the digital ecosystem.

The negative trends of 2013 include increased sophistication in the attacks and the tools used by threat agents, the ability of a large number of nation states to infiltrate government and private organizations, and the risks associated with Big Data and the Internet of Things.

The negative trends section also includes the fact that cybercriminals are migrating their patterns and tools from PCs to the mobile ecosystem.

On the other hand, there are some positive trends as well. The list includes the successful law enforcement operations, such as the ones that targeted the Silk Road underground marketplace, the creator of the BlackHole exploit kit, and cybercriminals responsible for the piece of ransomware known as the Police Virus.

Another good thing is the increase in the rate at which vendors respond to vulnerability reports and patch their products. Finally, the number and quality of reports regarding cyber threats has increased.

The top three threats are considered to be drive-by-downloads, Trojans and code injections.

ENISA has also identified a series of issues that should be addressed. For instance, the agency believes that if end users adopted simple security measures, the number of incidents would be reduced by 50% on a global scale.

In addition, the agency calls for a greater collaboration between organizations as far as information analysis, collection, assessment and validation are concerned.

“This threat analysis presents indispensable information for the cyber security community regarding the top threats in cyber-space, the trends, and how adversaries are setting up their attacks by using these threats,” said the Executive Director of ENISA, Professor Udo Helmbrecht.

The complete ENISA Threat Landscape 2013 report is available on the agency’s website.