Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2026: Cybersecurity research – the battle between good and evil
Back in the day when people were just starting to use computers more widely, up-and-coming hackers just wanted to show off. In contrast, the cyberattacks we’ve been seeing since those days indicate there’s a lot of money to be made. According to experts, damages caused by these attacks around the globe are projected to reach $11 trillion annually. This figure does not only include the data they plunder but also the damages caused by production standstills, lost contracts and orders, just to name a few. Experts have pinpointed a figure of $230 billion for Germany, Austria and Switzerland combined. Chainalysis, a blockchain analytics and intelligence platform, tracks payments to cryptocurrency wallets, among other things. Their analysts calculate that ransom demands of nearly $820 million are paid globally each year due to ransomware. […]
AV-TEST is an independent supplier of services in the fields of IT Security and Antivirus Research, focusing on the detection and analysis of the latest malicious software and its use in comprehensive comparative testing of security products.
Due to the timeliness of the testing data, malware can instantly be analyzed and categorized, trends within virus development can be detected early, and IT-security solutions can be tested and certified. The AV-TEST Institute’s results provide an exclusive basis of information helping vendors to optimize their products, special interest magazines to publish research data, and end users to make good product choices.
AV-TEST has operated out of Magdeburg (Germany) since 2004 and employs more than 30 team members, professionals with extensive practical experience. The AV-TEST laboratories include 500 client and server systems, where more than 3,500 terabyte of independently-collected test data, containing both malicious and harmless sample information, are stored and processed.
AV-TEST – SITS Deutschland GmbH
Klewitzstraße 7
39112 Magdeburg
Telefon: +49 391 6075460
https://www.av-test.org
E-Mail: presse@av-test.com
