If a company is listed on the Dark Web, it is much more likely to be a victim of cyber attacks
New research shows that simply listing a company on the dark web increases the likelihood of a cyberattack.
A report from Searchlight Cyber and the Marsh McLennan Cyber Risk Intelligence Center found that the presence of an organization’s data on the dark web increases the risk of cyberattacks.
The ‘dark web’ is the part of the Internet that is not accessible in the usual way through a browser and is generally used by cybercriminals to share resources, sell goods and services, and communicate.
Combined sources for more risk
An analysis of Searchlight’s dark web dataset, based on a sample of more than 9,000 organizations with an overall breach rate of 3.7% between 2020 and 2023, found a significant correlation: if a dark web listing contains compromised users, that company is 2.56 times more likely to be hit by a cyberattack.
Listing an organization or data related to an organization on a dark web marketplace increases the chance of a cyberattack by 2.41 times. Listing an organization or data related to an organization on plain-text repositories also increases the chance by 1.88 times.
To make matters worse, combining multiple sources provides an even stronger indication of increased risks.
“If security teams can identify their exposure on the dark web, they have a huge opportunity to be proactive, adapt their defenses and effectively stop attacks before they are launched by cybercriminals,” said Ben Jones, co-founder and CEO of Searchlight Cyber.
