Online threats in Southeast Asia grew alarmingly while Singapore logged the highest year-on-year jump in terms of web threats targeting businesses in the same period, said Kaspersky recently.
According to the firm, its CybersLatest data shows a 45% jump in web threats blocked by its business solutions last year.
Online threats or Web-based threats, refers to attempts to download malicious objects from a malicious/infected website, the firm said.
Malicious websites are deliberately created by malicious users; infected sites include those with user-contributed content (such as forums), as well as compromised legitimate resources, the firm added.
Web threats are made possible by end-user vulnerabilities, web service developers/operators, or web services themselves, according to Kaspersky.
During the peak of the pandemic in 2020, Kaspersky said it prevented 10,200,817 web attacks from infecting businesses in SEA.
The number dipped slightly in 2021 at 9,180,344 and spiked yet again in 2022 at 13,381,164, the firm added.
When it comes to online threats in Southeast Asia, Singapore logged more than a three-fold spike (329%) after Kaspersky’s business solutions blocked a total of 889,093 web attacks, a whopping increase from 2021’s total of just 207,175 incidents, the firm noted.
The uptick was also observed across the four Southeast Asian countries — Malaysia (197%), Thailand (63%), Indonesia (46%), and the Philippines (29%), the firm observed.
Only Vietnam witnessed a slight dip (-12%) after recording only 2,485,168 web threat incidents last year as compared to 2021’s 2,822,591, the firm added.
“Last year was a period of reopening for most businesses in Southeast Asia and, unfortunately, so as for cybercriminals,” said Yeo Siang Tiong, General Manager for Southeast Asia at Kaspersky.
While the Vietnam government has continuously pushed to beef up the cybersecurity defenses of the nation and the country’s local companies, the greater Southeast Asia region, however, needs more help in building their capabilities to protect their companies against cyberattacks, Yeo noted.
According to him, human error and technical error are two major weaknesses that make most threats successful.
Full protection from web threats means you will need to find ways to cover these weak points, he advised.
As these online threats were targeted against enterprises, this means these are just the starting points of more complex cyberattacks, he said.
Enterprises need to build a consistent ongoing incident investigation and response processes, nurturing and supporting your IT security talent-base, and making the most of your time and resources, Kaspersky advised.
