Cyber threats are increasing – 10 percent more malicious URLs

Cyber threats are on the rise globally, according to the latest Acronis Cyberthreats Update for February 2026, which once again shows a monthly increase in blocked malicious URLs. At just under 10 percent, the increase was lower than in January. The percentage of endpoints with blocked malware increased by 0.5 percentage points to 4.2 percent compared to the previous month.

Acronis Cyberthreats Update provides monthly updates on the threat landscape as well as analysis from experts at Acronis Threat Research Unit (TRU) to help businesses and individuals protect themselves from ever-changing security challenges. In February 2026, Acronis solutions blocked nearly 10 percent more malicious URLs than the previous month, following a 35.6 percent increase in January compared to December 2025. At the same time, the percentage of users with at least one malware threat blocked on their endpoint increased by 0.5 percentage points to 4.2 percent, up from 3.7 percent in January. In terms of data breaches, 715 cases were publicly reported in February, which is on par with the previous month (723).

The top three most active malware threats in February once again feature familiar names: the IoT malware Mirai, the banking Trojan Grandoreiro, and the remote access Trojan AsyncRAT, which is often difficult to detect due to various obfuscation methods. Among the ransomware groups, Qilin reported being the most active group with 107 victims, just like the previous month, followed by The Gentlemen with 88 and Akira with 47 reported cases.

Additional insights

• In Germany, the normalized detection rate for malicious URLs dropped from 9.8 percent in January to 8.7 percent in February 2026. Among the analyzed focus countries, Germany thus ranked second, behind the United States with 9.0 percent.
• The detection rate for URLs developed unevenly between countries: while it decreased significantly in, for example, Singapore (-33 percent) and Canada (-24 percent), it increased clearly in New Zealand (+20 percent) and Italy (+16 percent).
• With 52.5 percent of affected users, Palestine had the highest malware detection rate in the world, just like in January – well ahead of Sri Lanka (19.7 percent) and Bangladesh (13.7 percent).

“The threat landscape in February gives no reason to overstate the danger,” says Markus Fritz, General Manager DACH at Acronis. “Endpoint malware detection rates remained moderate and the number of malicious URLs blocked increased again significantly. The large regional differences in URL detections indicate a geographic shift in threat activity, not a global slowdown. Therefore, organizations should continuously review their protection measures and use solutions that combine behavioral and AI-based detection.”

Tips for protecting against current threats

• Use strong, unique passwords along with a password manager
• Use encrypted cloud storage for sensitive files
• Use a robust security solution like Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud [2], which offers comprehensive protection through behavioral, AI, and ML-based detection, as well as anti-ransomware heuristics
• Introduces automated recovery of encrypted or tampered files via Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud [2]
• Use advanced email security and URL filtering to protect against phishing and other social engineering attacks
• Use patch management to keep software up to date
• Check signed installation files not only for their signature, but also for the configuration data they contain
• Critically review remote access programs and limit use to what is necessary

The full Acronis Cyberthreats Update for March 2026 is available at:
www.acronis.com/en/tru/posts/acronis-cyberthreats-update-march-2026/

[1] www.acronis.com/en/tru/posts/acronis-cyberthreats-update-march-2026/
[2] www.acronis.com/de-de/products/cloud/cyber-protect/

About Acronis

Acronis is a global cybersecurity company that offers the only natively integrated cybersecurity, data protection and infrastructure management platform for MSPs and IT departments. Acronis solutions help organizations identify and protect their IT environments, detect and manage threats, and recover and manage data to ensure data integrity and business continuity.

Acronis is a Swiss company which was founded in 2003 in Singapore. The company has 15 offices globally and employees in over 60 countries. Acronis Cyber Platform is available in 26 languages in over 150 countries and is already used by more than 21,000 service providers to protect over 750,000 organizations.

For more information, visit www.acronis.com.