In the first half of 2021, global cybersecurity firm Trend Micro prevented around 40.9 billion email threats, malicious files, and URLs for its clients, and in India, it blocked a total of 1,11,028 email spam, malicious URLs, and malware, the company announced on Wednesday.
Ransomware remained the top threat globally in the first half of the year, with overall ransomware threats in India standing at 12.98%, second highest in Asia behind China.
According to the research findings, the cyber criminals used advanced persistent threat tools and techniques to steal and encrypt victims’ data while working with third parties to gain access to targeted networks.
Vijendra Katiyar, Country Manager, India and SAARC, Trend Micro, said “The first step towards effectively mitigating cyber risk is understanding the scale, complexity, and specific characteristics of the threat landscape,”
The report noted that cryptocurrency miners have surpassed WannaCry and web shells as the most detected malware.
The banking industry was disproportionately affected, with a global surge in ransomware attacks of 1,318% (year-over-year) in the first half of 2021.
In the first six months of 2021, Trend Micro detected 4,497 instances of online banking malware in India.
Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks increased by 4%, potentially because of the Covid-19 opportunities for threat actors.
The report noted “As threats continue to increase in frequency and sophistication, enterprise security operation centre (SOC) teams will require a platform that can streamline security processes without sacrificing reliability,”