A Look Back at 2021: Nord Security’s Year In Review
Milda Jokubaitė
January 26, 2022
2021 presented us with a number of lessons and challenges in our everyday and digital environment, so security remained of the utmost importance. Therefore, our year was focused on raising our standards even higher and delivering improvements to our product family to keep people safe in their digital lives.
Tom Okman and Eimantas Sabaliauskas, Co-founders of Nord Security
Read our full Year in Review to discover more about what we were up to in 2021.
In 2021, we continued to focus on liberty, equality, and education. We've supported various civil society organizations, such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and more. We've partnered up with academic institutions to boost the education of future cybersecurity experts. Finally, we fought for gender equality in tech by supporting women empowerment organizations and joining mentoring programs, like Women in Cybersecurity, Women Go Tech, and more.
As security is our top priority, we put even more effort into ensuring our products' safety and reliability:
We've expanded our Bug Bounty program by adding NordPass and NordLocker, to the NordVPN product added earlier. This program allows anyone to report bugs for a reward and helps us build a safer online world.
NordPass, NordLayer, and NordVPN went through independent security audits that ensured that the products met all security requirements and had no critical vulnerabilities.
NordVPN, NordPass Business, and NordLayer have received ioXt and ISO 27001 certificates confirming that these products meet the industry standards.
Last year, we did a number of things to raise people's awareness of cybersecurity: We've continued with an International VPN Day, shared our expertise at numerous conferences and webinars, and carried out various studies which results have prompted public and organizational concerns about the cybersecurity challenges of the past year. Here are our 10 most significant findings:
On average, people spend 26 years of their life online.
National Privacy Test taken by people in different countries showed that 69% of respondents have privacy awareness. Even though 47% of people know how to stay safe online, they have poor cybersecurity habits and rarely use them in practice.
"12345" and "qwerty" are the most popular passwords worldwide, meaning that all users of these and other popular passwords are at high risk of a data breach.
Fortune 500 companies use poor password practices too. 20% of passwords were exactly the same as the company's name or a name variation.
One-fourth of 7,000 people surveyed don't protect IoT devices.
Of the 7,800 respondents, even 80% are worried about tracking. Most are afraid of being tracked by criminals, social media, information and advertising aggregators, governments and brands, and advertising agencies.
In 2021 trojan-type malware infected over 3 million computers worldwide that stole 1.2 TB of private data.
Construction, manufacturing, and finances were the top industries facing the most ransomware attacks in 2021.
In the black market, payment card details cost as little as $10.50.
During pandemics, people tend to work one hour longer than in the pre-pandemic period.
Our team is on a mission to create a safe cyber future. Therefore, last year, we continued to strengthen and improve our products to the highest possible standard:
NordVPN was upgraded with a new multi-factor authentication method for a more secure connection. Besides that, it got a new time tracking feature, helping users’ monitor their time spent online. Moreover, NordVPN is now available as an Edge browser extension.
With the new Web Vault feature, NordPass users can access their passwords directly from the browser. Another upgrade made - machine learning autofill which considerably improved information entry processes.
NordPass Business introduced NordPass Enterprise password management solution and Data Breach Scanner. Businesses can now receive prompt notifications of each data breach.
NordLayer rebranded from NordVPN Teams, introduced the Smart Access feature, implemented the Wireguard protocol and the option to log in with biometrics.
NordLocker went mobile by releasing its Android and iOS versions. Moreover, introduced two main features - the Space Saver and Web Access. It allows users to offload files into encrypted cloud storage and access them from the browser on any device.
This is only a short list of everything Nord Security was up to in 2021. Find the full report below.
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