India still a huge target for Cyber criminals

April 22, 2016 Hot from the Oven Valli Sarvani No comments

A recent report from Symantec, a global leader in cyber security revealed a lot of information regarding India’s position in cyber security. Even though there has been quite a decrease in the amount of spam originating from India, the country is still ranked at the third position for overall malicious activity.

The malicious activity includes malware, phishing hosts and bots according to the report. In 2014, India ranked sixth at being source of spam. After a lot of control, India reached 18th position as source of spam.

Even with all the change, it seems that India is still a top source and also a destination for cyber-attacks according Symantec’s “Internet Security Threat Report”. Tarun Kaura, Symantec director, solution product management for Asia Pacific and Japan said that the report goes to show that India is still one of the favorite targets of cyber criminals.

He added that India is found to be the second most favored destination for cyber criminals for Ransomware in Asia. The average number of attacks per day in the country increased by 114 percent and reached 15 attacks per hour. Kaura also said that almost 10 percent of these attacks were crypto-ransomware which is a threat to consumers and enterprises alike.

In the report it was found that November was the busiest month for cyber criminals last year. In that month, there was an average of 2.5 targeted attacks per day aimed at the Indian enterprises across the globe.

India had a 156 percent increase in the number of social media scams last year. Every sixth Indian was impacted by these scams. This made India the most targeted country in Asia and the second most targeted in the world.

According to the report, new professional cyber criminals are extending the reach of enterprise and consumer threats causing an increase in online crime.

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