2020: The State of Encrypted Attacks

Zscaler ThreatLabZ analyzed encrypted traffic across its cloud for the first nine months of 2020 and found a sharp rise in SSL/TLS-encrypted threats—including phishing domains, cloud-storage-hosted malware, and ransomware—reporting a 260% increase in SSL-encrypted threats and a 500% increase in ransomware over encrypted channels; the research highlights cloud services abuse and disproportionate targeting of healthcare and recommends inspecting/decrypting SSL traffic and applying zero-trust controls.