The year 2021 has been no stranger to cyberattacks, especially high-profile ones that garnered national attention. Oil companies, meat producers and local water suppliers were all victims of attacks that got national coverage.
TechRepublic highlighted in an article how organizations have been on high alert since these attacks and Get Response, an automated marketing company, released a report that details online hacking statistics from state-to-state in 2020.
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“During a year loaded with anxiety, unemployment, and severance from loved ones, Americans looked to the Internet as a lifeline to the wider world. But cyberattacks in 2020 were as widespread and far-reaching as the effects of Covid-19—no state was safe,” reads a portion of the release written by Get Response U.S. SEO Manager, Robert Bernal and reported in the TechRepublic article.
Get Responses report, or “State of Online Hacking in America,” comes from hacking data collected by the FBI and singles out the data based on the number of victims per 100,000 residents.
The Five States with The Most Victims per 100,000 Residents:
Nevada – 523
District of Columbia – 302
Iowa – 297
Alaska – 283
Florida – 250
The Five States with The Least Victims per 100,000 residents:
Mississippi – 83
South Dakota – 88
North Dakota – 100
West Virginia – 106
Louisiana – 109
Part of the report details financial losses per 100,000 residents based on the data that showed North Dakota topping this portion of the list with $3,386,200 in total victim losses per 100,000 residents. North Dakota was followed by the District of Columbia which lost $2,684,059 and New York which lost $2,137,464.
Missouri and Colorado took the fourth and fifth spots on the list with $1,888,635 and $1,748,021 in financial losses per 100,000 residents, respectively.
“Cyberattacks, particularly those focused on business sectors like banks and hospitals, can lead to more than data disclosure and reputation damage; the financial impact of breaches and subsequent losses can be significant,” Bernal says in the release and reported in the TechRepublic article.
“North Dakotans, with 100 victims per 100K residents, lost almost $3.5 million to hacking, and New Yorkers, with 177 victims per capita, lost just over $2 million—both ranked relatively low for victim rates,” Bernal says in the release. “Conversely, D.C. residents experienced higher rates of hacking and lost almost $2.7 billion to cyberattacks in 2020. But South Dakotans, with lower rates of per capita victims, also lost significantly less than most other states, with $362,653 lost to cyberattacks,” Bernal continues.
Many of these large-scale attacks have prompted companies and organizations all over the world to rethink their cybersecurity and are exploring new methods like zero-tolerance software to prepare for similar attacks in the future.
