Verizon's Suzanne Widup joins the podcast to provide insight into cybersecurity trends and share key findings from the service provider's annual Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR). The full report can be downloaded here. 

As the senior principal threat intel analyst for Verizon and co-author of the DBIR, Widup has her finger on the pulse of hackers' evolving efforts to undermine network security via phishing attacks, ransomware and social engineering. 

"We've seen tremendous growth in our data sets over time on both social attacks and ransomware," said Widup. Hacker's approach to ransomware has evolved as well – "Now you not only lose access to your data but they can give it to other people … we've seen the commoditization of ransomware, giving out ransomware-as-a-service and how mature these marketplaces have become." 

In addition, as enterprises became more reliant on cloud networking during the pandemic, hackers took advantage of this shift. Bad actors also took advantage of public interest in pandemic-related news by incorporating language around COVID-19 into their phishing lures. 

"We did see more of the attacks targeting the cloud systems than we had before," said Widup. "The phishing lures take whatever the current headline is, so COVID was all over the place there." 

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