Short & Compact: Cyber Risks
- Publisher: Creditreform Jena
- Current Situation: Significant increase in cyberattacks on German targets.
- Affected: Increasingly small and medium-sized enterprises as well as authorities.
- Type of Danger: Focus on DDoS attacks (overloading of websites).
- Statistics: In the first half of 2025, approximately 3.3% of all global attacks targeted Germany.
Jena. It is an invisible war being waged around the clock, and its effects are often only noticed when the screen remains black or the company website is no longer accessible. This Thursday, Creditreform Jena published an analysis of the current threat situation in the digital space. The message is clear: the walls must be built higher, the moats dug deeper, as German companies are increasingly becoming the focus of international hackers.
A Warning Shot from the Recent Past
To illustrate the urgency of the situation, the report looks back at July 2025. At that time, it hit the city of Nürnberg. What initially appeared to be a technical defect turned out to be a massive DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack. An ideologically motivated hacker network flooded the city administration’s servers with such a volume of simultaneous requests that the systems collapsed under the load.
Although IT specialists were able to prevent sensitive data from being leaked at the time, important citizen services were unavailable for hours. Such incidents are no longer isolated cases. According to data from Microsoft, around 3.3 percent of all global cyberattacks were specifically directed against German infrastructure in the first half of 2025. This puts the Federal Republic in a regrettable top position within the European Union.
Danger for the Jena SME Sector
This development is also alarming for the business location of Jena. While large corporations often have their own cyber defense departments, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) often still lull themselves into a false sense of security. Yet they are precisely the attractive targets: security measures here are often less complex, while the exploitable data – from patents to customer databases – is just as valuable.
The experts at Creditreform point out that attacks are increasingly automated. Hackers systematically scan the web for vulnerabilities. Outdated software, insecure passwords, or missing firewalls act like an open back door. Once a system is infected, there is not only the threat of business standstill but also immense financial damage and a massive loss of trust among customers and partners.
Prevention is the Best Protection
What can companies in Jena and the region do? In addition to technical hurdles such as modern firewalls and regular backups, the “human factor” plays a decisive role. Training for employees to recognize phishing emails is essential. Furthermore, it is recommended to have emergency plans ready: Who do I call when nothing works anymore? How do I inform my customers?
Creditreform itself uses insights from economic research to secure its own systems and sensitize members to the risks. In a networked economy, as lived in the “Lichtstadt” Jena, IT security is no longer an option, but a basic requirement for entrepreneurial success.
Source:
High Walls, Deep Moats
Transparency Note: This article was created automatically, editorially reviewed, and expanded with AI support.