Sophos found that attackers used RDP for internal lateral movement in 82% of cases in 2021, up from 69% in 2020 Common tool combinations used in attacks provide a powerful warning signal of intruder activity. For example, the incident investigations found that in 2021 PowerShell and malicious non-PowerShell scripts were seen together in 64% of cases; PowerShell and Cobalt Strike combined in 56% of cases; and PowerShell and PsExec were found in 51% of cases. The detection of such correlations can serve as an early warning of an impending attack or confirm the presence of an active attack Fifty percent of ransomware incidents involved confirmed data exfiltration – and with the available data, the mean gap between data theft and the deployment of ransomware was 4.28 days. Seventy-three percent of incidents Sophos responded to in 2021 involved ransomware. Of these ransomware incidents, 50% also involved data exfiltration.