Report by HP Wolf Security

Security Threat Insights Report: March 2025

11 FINDINGSPublished Mar 18, 2025
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Key Findings

In Q4 2024, archives were the second most popular malware delivery file type with 32% of threats

ArchivesMalware DeliveryQ4 2024Percentage

Malicious PDF documents were the third most popular threat file type isolated by HP Sure Click in Q4 2024

PDFThreat File TypeQ4 2024Popularity

11% of email threats evaded gateway security in Q4 2024

Email ThreatsGateway EvasionQ4 2024Percentage

The popularity of executables and scripts as a malware delivery type saw a 3% point rise over Q3 2024

ExecutablesScriptsMalware DeliveryQ4 2024

More than half (53%) of threats targeting endpoints were delivered by email in Q4 2024

EmailThreat VectorEndpointsPercentage

Threats delivered in PDF documents accounted for 10% in Q4 2024

PDFThreat File TypeQ4 2024Percentage

In Q4 2024, executables and scripts retained first place as the most popular malware delivery type with 43% of threats caught by HP Sure Click

ExecutablesScriptsMalware DeliveryQ4 2024

In Q4 2024, HP threat researchers saw a growth in social engineering campaigns that rely on fake CAPTCHA challenges to infect users with malware

Social EngineeringFake CAPTCHAQ4 2024Malware

8% of threats relied on documents such as Microsoft Word formats (e.g. DOC, DOCX) in Q4 2024

Word DocumentsThreat File TypeQ4 2024Percentage

Malicious spreadsheets (e.g. XLS, XLSX) totalled 3% of threats in Q4 2024

SpreadsheetsThreat File TypeQ4 2024Percentage

10% of threats were PDF files in Q4 2024

PDFThreat File TypeQ4 2024Percentage