As we gear up to enter the new financial year, one thing is for sure: cyberattacks per day continue to pose a major threat to businesses of all sizes. With the rise of IoT attacks and the low prosecution rate of cybercriminals, it’s no wonder that companies are spending billions to protect themselves.

As technology has advanced and the world has become more interconnected, the threat of cyber-attacks has become a significant concern for businesses, smaller healthcare organisations, governments, civil rights and individuals alike. While cyber-attacks can target any sector, healthcare organisations have become an increasingly attractive target for cybercriminals in recent years.

A cyber attack or data breach is a threat to every business. Still, it can be more devastating for small businesses as they face numerous challenges, including cash inflow, competition, employee retention, limited funding, supply chain and other business problems simultaneously, making it difficult for them to survive.

Accountants are being warned to be on their guard from malicious hackers, as cybercriminals exploit the rush to prepare tax returns for clients before the deadline of US Tax Day. US Tax Day, which falls on Tuesday April 18 this year, is the day on which income tax returns for individuals are due to be submitted to the government. Inevitably it's a busy time for accounting firms and bookkeepers who are feverishly collecting necessary documents from their clients.

In late 2022, SafeBreach commissioned S&P Global Market Intelligence to conduct a research project surveying 400 highly qualified security practitioners across the United States and Europe. The goal was to understand respondents’ biggest security challenges, the level of adoption and maturity of the continuous security validation (CSV) tools they use to address those challenges, and the business outcomes they achieved.

As our lives become more intertwined with the digital world, cyberattacks are growing in sophistication. And since the pandemic, the prevalence of hybrid work culture has posed additional security challenges. This creates pressure for businesses to implement advanced measures to safeguard their users’ digital identities and network resources. Failing to do so not only damages an organization’s reputation, but also leads to numerous legal issues and heavy recovery costs.

Today’s attackers aren’t just exploiting vulnerabilities — research from Malicious Packages Special Report: Attacks Move Beyond Vulnerabilities illustrates the growing threat of malicious packages. According to the report, the number of malicious packages published to npm and rubygems alone grew 315 percent from 2021 to 2022.