Cyber Activity Balance 2024: The European Union in Focus
Key trends, dynamics, and findings on cyber incidents targeting EU member states in 2024
- 13.02.2025
- Bund, Jakob; Bendiek, Annegret; Hemmelskamp, Jonas
- EN
The European Union in Focus
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Focusing on the European Union threat landscape, the key findings presented in this edition of the Cyber Activity Balance draw on EuRepoC’s open-source based contribution to empirically-driven cyber peace and conflict research.
Following a surge in threat activity documented for the EU in 2023, activity remained at an elevated level in 2024. Operations against EU targets increased by 16%. Considering the slight decrease in the volume of operations tracked globally (excluding EU member states) of 6.3%, this development points to a concentration of malicious activity against EU targets in 2024.
Key findings:
- Criminal data theft is the most frequent threat for telecommunication companies in the EU
- Two tales of tension: Disruption and stealth as operating principles of Russia and China nexus actors
- Attribution timelines are shrinking
- Political responses emphasize low- and high-intensity incidents
- Legal responses remain tied to attribution timelines
About this report
The Cyber Conflict Briefing and Cyber Activity Balance are analytic products prepared by the European Repository. The German edition is published in collaboration with Tagesspiegel Background - Cybersecurity. The English edition of the Cyber Activity Balance 2024 is published in parallel as Working Paper by the German Institute for International and Foreign Affairs (SWP).
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