Cyber Attacks vs Vulnerabilities
The line graph above shows a correlation between cyber attacks and vulnerabilities over nine years. The vertical axis represents the number of reported cyber attacks and vulnerabilities. The cyber attacks data represent a recorded cyber attack that targeted a vulnerable system. Meanwhile, the vulnerabilities data represent weakness, flaw, or error found within a security system that has the potential to be leveraged by a threat agent to compromise a secure system. The horizontal axis represents the period from 2009 to 2018.
The line graph shows an increasing trend of cyber attacks and vulnerabilities from 2009 to 2018. As can be seen, the cyber attacks and vulnerabilities began with a number less than ten in 2009, and both of them significantly increased and reached the highest number in 2018. Between 2009 to 2012, the number of cyber attacks and vulnerabilities relatively have the same number. Starting from 2012, the number of vulnerabilities has a significantly higher quantity compared to the number of cyber attacks. Another notable data, the number of reported data is also relatively stagnant between 2013 to 2014. It is worthwhile to note that there is a correlation between the number of vulnerabilities and cyber attacks. This finding is reasonable because a hacker needs to exploit system vulnerabilities during a cyber attack. More vulnerabilities potentially can lead to more cyber attacks. Therefore, to minimize potential cyber attacks, the software developer needs to reduce the potential number of vulnerabilities in a system.
