Kaspersky Blocked 49 Million Attacks Targeting Businesses in Southeast Asia Last Year

Kaspersky blocked 49 million attacks in Southeast Asia (photo: Pixabay)

JAKARTA - Kaspersky's latest data says that its cybersecurity solutions for businesses have successfully blocked 49.042.966 local threats that attempted to infect companies in the Southeast Asia region last year.

Of these, there were 19.614.418 incidents of attacks that occurred at Indonesian companies. Meanwhile, there were 17.834.312 attacks in Vietnam and 5.838.460 in Thailand.

In addition, there are 3.841.548 local threats targeting businesses in Malaysia that have been prevented by Kaspersky, 1.585.384 in the Philippines, and 328.844 in Singapore.

"The peak of the pandemic in 2020 saw 92 million local infections prevented by Kaspersky. Then this figure decreased in 2021 with 69 million incidents and fell even further last year with 49 million incidents, almost half of the 2020 total," said Yeo Siang Tiong, General Manager for Southeast Asia at Kaspersky in a statement received in Jakarta.

Kaspersky statistics also show that a landscape of malicious programs are found either directly on the user's computer or on removable media connected to it (flash drives, camera memory cards, mobile phones, external hard drives), or that initially enter the computer in an unopened form (for example, programs in complex installers, encrypted files, etc).

While local threats to companies in Southeast Asia were higher compared to online threats monitored and blocked by Kaspersky last year, a steady decline was also seen year-on-year.

“Despite the downward trend, businesses or companies must remain vigilant because armed USB and removable drives can still be an effective source of malware that can harm your network, servers, even hardware,” added Yeo.

According to Yeo, protection against offline attacks requires not only an antivirus solution capable of dealing with infected objects, but also a firewall, anti-rootkit function, and control over removable devices.

If a USB or removable drive infects your system, Kaspersky experts advise businesses to have a comprehensive defense concept capable of equipping, informing, and guiding your team against the most sophisticated and targeted cyber attacks such as the Kaspersky Extended Detection and Response (XDR) platform.