Trend Micro Incorporate, a global leader in cybersecurity solutions, released its Midyear Security Roundup 2018, revealing that Asia scored the highest number and percentage when it comes to victims who fell prey to malicious URLs.

These links were being accessed at least more than 241 million times in Asia, accounting for approximately 57.9 per cent of all malicious links accessed globally.

Among all the Southeast Asian countries, Malaysia, ranked third in the region, generated 18.5 per cent of the clicks on these links, equivalent to a total of 5 million clicks.

The report also revealed that Asia is where more than half (51.4 percent) of banking malware were found.

88,000 banking malware attacks were blocked and deflected in the first half of 2018 in Asia, out of 172,000 globally. In Southeast Asia, Malaysia accounted for 11.4 percent of banking malware attacks (3,205 attacks), ranking the country third in the region.

Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa (AMEA), Trend Micro, vice president, Dhanya Thakkar, said that the adoption rate of cybersecurity technology in Malaysia needed to be accelerated.

“Cybersecurity is a core component of digital transformation that does not impede innovations. Now, with the rise of DevSecOps workflow, security can be delivered quickly together with new software programs.

“This way, businesses can strike a balance between speeding up digital transformation and protecting themselves against cyberattacks,” Thakkar mentioned.

Thakkar strongly recommends that Malaysian companies implement both detection and prevention solutions for endpoints, servers, and the network.

Globally, crypto-jacking attempts are making the biggest impact so far this year. Trend Micro recorded a 96 percent increase in cryptocurrency mining detections in 1H 2018 compared to all of 2017, and a 956 percent increase in detections versus 1H 2017. This indicates cybercriminals are shifting away from the quick payout of ransomware in favor of the slower, behind-the-scenes approach of stealing computing power to mine digital currency.

“The recent change in the threat landscape mirrors what we’ve seen for years – cybercriminals will constantly shift their tools, tactics, and procedures (TTPs) to improve their infection rates,”Southeast Asia and India, Trend Micro vice president, Nilesh Jain.

“Standard spray-and-pray ransomware attacks and data breaches had become the norm, so attackers changed their tactics to be more covert, using entry vectors not previously seen or used extensively.

“This means once again, business leaders must evaluate their defenses to ensure sufficient protection is in place to stop the latest and most pressing threats,” he added.

Faced with rapidly evolving threats, organizations need to consolidate using a vendor that can provide complete, multi-layered protection against both commodity malware and emerging threats. Trend Micro’s leading threat intelligence collected over 30 years of business enables comprehensive protection, blocking more than 20 billion threats so far this year and counting.

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