Quarter Four Report 2020

CERT NZ’s Quarter Four (Q4) Report provides an overview of reports about cyber security incidents impacting New Zealanders from 1 October – 31 December 2020.

This quarter, CERT NZ received 2,097 incident reports about individuals and businesses from all over New Zealand. This report shares examples of the incidents and advice on how to best protect against them.

There are two parts to the report:

  1. A Highlights Report focusing on selected cyber security incidents and issues.
  2. A Data Landscape Report providing a standardised set of results and graphs for the quarter.

Quarterly Report: Highlights Q4 2020 [PDF, 909 KB]

Quarterly Report: Data Landscape Q4 2020 [PDF, 1.4 MB]

Highlights

The average number of incident reports per quarter is 1,473 and average direct financial loss is $4.6 million. These figures are based on the previous eight quarters.

Number of incident reports by quarter

A total of 2,097 incidents were reported in Q4, down 20% from Q3.

Quarter 4 2020 incidents reported graph with 2097 incidents reported in this quarter

Full breakdown of incident reports for Q3 2019 to Q4 2020:

  • Q3 2019: 1,245
  • Q4 2019: 1,197
  • Q1 2020: 1,137
  • Q2 2020: 1,965
  • Q3 2020: 2,610
  • Q4 2020: 2,097

Breakdown by incident category

Phishing and credential harvesting remains the most report incident category.

Quarter 4 2020 graph showing breakdown by incident category with phishing scams and fraud then malware as top incidents

  2020 Q4 2020 Q3 (Comparison)
Phishing & credential harvesting 862 1064
Malware 628 886
Scams and fraud 398 423
Unauthorised access 106 113
Other 53 55
Suspicious network traffic 15 19
Website compromise 14 17
Ransomware 10 22
Denial of service 7 8
Reported vulnerability 5 15

Phishing

Phishing incidents

Phishing is consistently one of the highest incident categories reported to CERT NZ – making up 41% of all incidents reported in Q4, 2020.

Phishing trends in Q4

Attackers use a variety of phishing techniques to try and trick recipients into sharing their private information, making financial transactions, or opening malicious attachments or files.

Protect yourself from phishing

Attackers use different techniques to try and trick people in to sharing their information. These steps will help you shore up your online defences.

Malware

Malware targeting network attached storage devices

Attackers use a variety of techniques to spread malware and get their hands on private information.

In some cases they send malicious software through email attachments or links to infect recipient’s computers, in other cases, they target specific internet-exposed services.   

If you think your device has been affected, please report to CERT NZ www.cert.govt.nz/report

Data breaches

Risk of data breaches continue to rise

In Q4, the number of vulnerable databases continued to rise, up 26% from Q3.

Databases are a target for attackers because they often hold all sorts of private information. If a database is openly accessible from the internet, attackers can easily access the information it holds, and use it for financial gain. For example, the attacker may threaten to leak the data unless a ransom is paid or sell it to other attackers.

Protecting from a data breach

While you may need to engage your IT provider to secure your database, reducing the risk of a data breach is easier than fixing one. CERT NZ recommends the following steps:

  • Make sure your databases are not exposed to the internet.
  • Make sure your systems have the latest security updates.
  • Use long, strong and unique passwords.
  • Develop an incident response plan for what to do if your business is affected by a data breach.

Creating an incident response plan

  • Only collect information that you actually need from your customers and be clear about why you need it, as stated in the Privacy Act 2020.

Case study: CERT NZ helps New Zealand business secure databases

In Q4, the CERT NZ team identified that 23 seemingly individual Microsoft SQL servers were all linked to one nationally-franchised retail business. All servers were running a variety of versions and were served by a number of ISPs. These potentially vulnerable systems appeared to include back office and point of sale systems.