Cyber attacks during the Olympic games are not new. But the increased threat activity in Brazil deserves special attention, says Rajesh Maurya, Regional Director, India and SAARC, Fortinet.

Sharing details from FortiGuard Labs findings he said “the volume of malicious and phishing artifacts (i.e. domain names and URLs) in Brazil is on the rise. In June, Brazil's percentage increase was higher in three of four categories in Fortinet's report when compared with the global increase. The highest was in the malicious URL category at 83 per cent compared to 16 per cent for the rest of the world.”

“The history of these increased attacks will undoubtedly continue during the Olympic games. We, at FortiGuard Labs are already seeing indicators of repeat techniques such as domain lookalikes for payment fraud and malicious websites or URLs targeting event and government officials,” he said.

Emphasising the need to adopt a Security Fabric and not just end-to-end security point solutions for a unified and rapid response to advanced threats, he explained how complexity further add to the problem.

“The expanding attack surface enabled by technology innovation, new IoT devices, regulatory pressures and global shortage of cyber security talent continue to drive cyber threats. These combined with global political events add more complexity to the situation; complexity is the enemy of security,” Maurya said.

The Labs research saw a return of old threats and attack vectors and continued persistent of classic attacks such as Conficker and ransomware through updated variants.

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