UK businesses encountered more than 753,341 malicious attempts each to breach their online and IT systems, on average, in 2024, according to an analysis by Beaming.

This attack level was 4% higher than in 2023, making last year the worst ever for attempted cyber-attacks, with businesses encountering a new online threat every 42 seconds.

For the first time since 2021, the final quarter of 2024 was not the most prolific period of the year for cyber-attacks. The attack rate peaked at 2,192 per day in the third quarter of 2024 before declining to 2,063 per day in Q4. Despite this reduction, the final three months of 2024 were only the third quarter on record when the average number of cyber-attacks encountered by UK businesses exceeded 2,000 a day.

Previously, 2023 was the worst year on record for attempted cyber-attacks on UK businesses, when companies encountered an average of 720,252 malicious attempts to breach their systems each.

Before 2024, the average number of attempted attacks per day in a single quarter had only exceeded 2,000 in Q4 2023.

Remote IoT Devices Attract Most Cyber-attacks 

Hackers attacked remotely controlled devices connected to the Internet of Things most frequently in 2024. Business firewalls encountered more than 161 daily attacks targeting applications such as building control systems, security cameras, networked printers, remote monitoring, and industrial automation systems.

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Web applications, remote desktop software, and company databases were also frequently targeted, with businesses typically attracting more than 20 individual attacks daily for each of these systems in 2024.

Beaming Tracks a Quarter of Hackers to Locations in China

Beaming’s analysts identified over a million IP addresses being used to launch cyber-attacks on UK businesses in 2024 and traced almost a quarter (241,019) of them to locations in China.

Beaming also identified significant and increasing volumes of cyber-attacks that appeared to come from areas inside India (87,144 attacking IP addresses) and the USA (81,112) in 2024.

Commenting on the findings, Sonia Blizzard, Managing Director of Beaming, said: “The rise of automated cyberattacks means the internet has never been more dangerous, and we expect it will become even more so as hackers use AI.

“The good news is that we are not seeing record numbers of companies crippled by hackers because businesses have got better at protecting themselves and ISPs such as Beaming are working hard to prevent malicious activity at a network level.”