Singapore – Nearly 43 million local threats targeted Southeast Asian organisations in 2023, according to the latest report from global cybersecurity firm Kaspersky.
Data from the findings revealed that a total of 42,700,000 local infections were blocked by the company’s business solutions during the period of January to December last year. This highlights the significance of tracking local infections as an indicator of the overall cyberthreat landscape.
It was also observed that despite the increase in global threats in the previous year, all countries in the region except Singapore noted a slight decrease in the number of local threats detected and blocked. These encompass corporate devices, both for individual and business segments.
In particular, Singapore saw a 67% year-over-year increase, from 300,000 local incidents in 2022 to 500,000 in the past year.
However, businesses in Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand collectively faced the highest number of these threats in 2023.
Commenting about the report, Adrian Hia, managing director for Asia Pacific at Kaspersky, said, “Southeast Asia shows a solid potential to become a major manufacturing hub globally. The region is also consistent in charting steady digital economic growth through the years.”
“To be able to continue these feats, organisations, whether operating on IT or OT systems, should build their cyberdefenses against sophisticated attacks that use the same old techniques and tactics,” explained Adrian.
In light of these findings, the cybersecurity firm has also reminded organisations about the importance of protection, which includes a security solution capable of treating infected objects, a firewall, anti-rootkit functionality, and control over removable devices.
The said report was produced through the company’s security solutions scans of files on the hard drive at the moment they were created or accessed, as well as the results of scanning removable storage media.
