Online attacks on PHL businesses up 29% in 2022 – Kaspersky

April 17, 2023

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A hooded man holds a laptop computer as blue screen with an exclamation mark is projected on him in this illustration picture taken on May 13, 2017. — REUTERS

AS businesses reopened, web attacks targeting entities in the Philippines grew to 492,567 in 2022 from 382,940 in the previous year, said global cybersecurity firm Kaspersky.

“The Philippines logged a 29% increase in online attacks in 2022 compared to 2021,” it said in a report, defining web-based threats as “attempts to download malicious objects from an infected website.”

“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 of Kaspersky.

For the whole of Southeast Asia, Kaspersky said it blocked a total of 13.34-million web attacks from infecting businesses in 2022, which shows a 45.3% increase from the 9.18-million web attacks it recorded in 2021.

Singapore logged the highest year-on-year jump of more than threefold to 889,093 web attacks in 2022 from 207,175 in 2021.

Malaysia recorded a 197% increase, followed by Thailand at 63%, and Indonesia at 46%.

In contrast, incidents in Vietnam declined by 12% to 2.49 million in 2022 from 2.82 million in 2021.

Kaspersky identified human and technical errors as the two main weaknesses of businesses that lead to successful online attacks.

“Full protection from web threats means you will need to find ways to cover these weak points. As these web threats were targeted against enterprises, this means these are just the starting points of more complex cyberattacks,” it said.

To address this, businesses should have consistent incident investigation and response processes, the security company said.

“As 2023 will be the first year of fully reopened borders and markets, we encourage companies here to allocate budget and resources to strengthen their defenses against the increasing attacks against their networks,” said Mr. Yeo.

He said that the talent gap in the information technology security industry can be addressed through outsourcing experts and comprehensive solutions. — Justine Irish D. Tabile