The number of organizations discovering ransomware continues to decrease. According to Fortinet, that doesn’t mean attackers are slowing down.

In its Global Threat Landscape report, Fortinet looks back at the most notable trends in the cybersecurity landscape in the first half of 2023. One number immediately catches your eye: companies are discovering less ransomware than five years ago. Back then it was 22 percent, today it’s still 13 percent. But that’s no reason to limit security, Fortinet warns, because the total number of detections was actually thirteen times higher.

The report shows that attackers are now much more targeted. In the first half of 2023, Fortinet researchers discovered more than ten thousand unique exploits. That is 68 percent more than five years ago. Unique exploits quickly spawn new malware families and variants. As a result, Fortinet rose 135 and 175 percent, respectively.

red zone

The proliferation of malware variants seems reasonably predictable. The probability that a vulnerability will be exploited is expressed in an EPSS score. Top rated vulnerabilities are 327 times more likely to be exploited within seven days of publication.

Actively exploited vulnerabilities belong to the “red zone”, the so-called “sweet spot” for cybercriminals. According to Fortinet, that’s only 8 percent of known vulnerabilities. The red area is also useful information for organizations. After all, there are so many vulnerabilities that you can’t close them all at the same time. As a defender, when you know which vulnerabilities are being actively exploited and how, you know what security priorities you need to prioritize.

Download Fortinet’s full research report here.