More phishing attacks expected during holidays

By Arjay L. Balinbin, Senior Reporter

INTERNET security company Kaspersky expects more phishing attacks in the Philippines and its neighbors in Southeast Asia in the upcoming holidays, a company official said.

“Based on our recent report on phishing attacks as a whole, from January to June 2022 (12 million) the attacks exceeded Southeast Asia’s total number last year (11 million),” Jesmond Chang, Kaspersky head of corporate communications for Asia-Pacific, told BusinessWorld in an e-mail interview on Tuesday.

In its report, Kaspersky said the rise in the percentage of phishing detections in the Philippine e-commerce industry puts the country in third place among its Southeast Asian neighbors, next to Malaysia (572.48%) and Indonesia (443.33%).

Among the Philippines’ local bank customers, 8,454 phishing incidents were recorded in the second quarter, up from 4,746 detections in the first quarter, or a 78% increase within the first half of the year.

“The rise in global detections for the same period was only at 28%,” Kaspersky said.

Meanwhile, phishing attacks against payment systems in the Philippines went down by 19%.

“There were 132,125 detected phishing attempts in the first quarter among Kaspersky users in the payment system sector. Three months later, it trickled down to 105,986 incidents,” the company said.

“Hopefully, with the regulations in place and the people’ awareness, we can encourage them to have more proactive action in fighting against phishing or any cyberattacks,” Mr. Chang said. “We can do more collectively. We see this as an opportunity for the Philippines to beef up its collective efforts to achieve cyber-resiliency.”

He added that cross-border coordination, public-private partnerships, building trust partnerships, bridging the cybersecurity skills gap, capacity building, and education, among others, are “so crucial at this point if we want to advance the country’s cybersecurity readiness.”