The biggest shift the IBM® X-Force® team observed in 2023 was a pronounced surge in cyberthreats targeting identities.

In this era, the focus has shifted towards logging in rather than hacking in, highlighting the relative ease of acquiring credentials compared to exploiting vulnerabilities or executing phishing campaigns.

The IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index offers these insights as a resource to IBM clients, researchers in the security industry, policy makers, the media and the broader community of security professionals and business leaders.

Key Insights

71% Increase year over year in volume of attacks using valid credentials.
50% Market share threshold likely to trigger attacks against AI platforms.
32% Data theft and leak rose to the most common impact for organizations, indicating more groups are favoring this method to obtain financial gains.
30% Share of security misconfigurations among web application vulnerabilities identified.
For the third year in a row, manufacturing was the top-attacked industry, according to X-Force incident response data. The finance and insurance industry was in second place again for the third year in a row.