Key
North America
Europe
Asia
South America Undisclosed Oceania
Africa
There are no deviations from the norm with regard to the most targeted regions in 2023, with North America, Europe and Asia occupying more than 80% of the pie chart, with the rest being fairly evenly split between South America, Undisclosed, Oceania and Africa. As for the remaining regions; South America experienced 214 cases (15%), Undisclosed had 151 cases (3%) which accounts for those hacked organisations whose names were not disclosed by the threat actors and therefore the regions unidentifiable.
Figure 22: Total Victims by Region in 2023
As can be seen in Figure 22, North America was the most targeted region in 2023, accounting for 2330 attacks (or 50%), followed by Europe with 1300 (28%), and in third we have Asia with 475 attacks (or 10%). As can be seen in Figure 22, North America was the most targeted region in 2023. Threat actors likely perceive these regions as wealthier which thereby increases their targeting, consistently making these three regions the most targeted. Notably, in 2022 the distribution of attacks between North America and Europe was less disparate with them contributing 44% and 35% respectively, showing that interest in the former has seemingly increased in 2023. In fact, relatively speaking, North America’s targeting increased by 6%, even with the sizeable 84% increase in overall ransomware attacks in 2023.
Oceania suffered 108 attacks (2%), and finally Africa saw 89 (2%).
Contrasting the situation with the top three, these regions have stayed largely consistent with 2022, proportionately speaking, where South America contributed 5%, Oceania 3%, Africa 2%, and finally just 9 undisclosed attacks (0%) as this was a new technique at the time. Something to extrapolate from this data is that the extortive methodology of keeping victim names redacted does not seem to have been a passing fancy and must be proving effective in pressuring victims, as it now accounts for 3% of the year’s total. We expect this extortion technique to persist in 2024 and, if other threat actors begin to adopt it, we could even see it increasing by 2024’s close.
As a result, Europe’s targeting decreased by 7% and Asia’s decreased by 1%.
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