Billions of stolen passwords, usernames and other digital credentials are now for sale on the Dark Web. Chances are pretty good that yours are among them.

The Dark Web is a collection of websites that are not indexed by search engines and are highly encrypted, allowing users to remain anonymous.

Microsoft reports that 92 percent of all Exchange Servers vulnerable to recently uncovered zero-day flaws have now been patched and updated. While that’s good news, there are still tens of thousands of unpatched servers that remain susceptible to a range of potentially devastating exploits such as remote code execution, server hijacking, ransomware, cryptomining, data theft and backdoor attacks.

Phishing attacks typically cast a wide net to try and snag a few targets through the mass distribution of fraudulent emails. Even as these attacks become increasingly common, some malicious actors are looking to get their hooks into even bigger fish.

Law enforcement officials and information security experts have noted a steady increase in “whaling” attacks aimed at senior executives, managers and other key individuals in IT, accounting and finance.

The recent takedown of one of the world’s most prolific botnets should make the cyberworld much safer, but analysts warn that organizations must remain vigilant. Given Emotet’s remarkable resilience over the years, we may not have seen the last of the notorious malware and botnet.

Email turns 50 years old this year, and it seems as though analysts having been predicting the technology’s impending demise for at least half that time. Instead, it continues to be the de facto standard for business communication with upwards of 300 billion messages sent and received every single day.

A recent global survey illustrates the critical need for reliable, modern communications technologies to support remote business operations during the ongoing pandemic. Nearly three-quarters of businesses surveyed by the Savanta research firm say the shift to remote work exposed shortcomings in their systems.

Organizations didn’t have much time to prepare when the pandemic forced a sudden shift to a work-from-home (WFH) model. Many employees and even IT managers had no choice but to figure it out on the fly. Given the circumstances, businesses were remarkably successful at navigating such a significant change to continue functioning.

There has been a lot of focus on the security threats associated with remote workers — and rightfully so. In the Acronis Cyberthreats Report 2020, 31 percent of organizations reported daily cyberattacks, primarily targeting remote workers. The rapid shift to remote work greatly expanded the attack surface, with employees’ devices connecting to corporate resources from outside the network perimeter.

In our last post, we discussed four cyber threats that you should prepare for in 2021. Ransomware, threats targeting personal devices, encrypted threats and attacks on virtual private networks are among the cyberattacks expected to cause the most damage in the coming year.

Cybersecurity threats skyrocketed in 2020. Hackers took advantage of the fear and uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to lure in victims with phishing campaigns. The rapid transition to work-from-home strategies left organizations vulnerable to attacks on remote workers with inadequate security controls.