The overall chance of home users for personal computers encountering a cyber threat on their device has increased worldwide year-over-year, according to cybersecurity firm Avast’s latest Global PC Risk Report.

In India, the likelihood of a home user encountering any type of PC malware is 28.22 per cent.

The report further explored the possibility of users facing ‘advanced’ threats. The cybersecurity firm defines advance threats as “more sophisticated or threats never seen before, designed to bypass common protection technologies included in security software signatures, heuristics, emulators, URL filtering, and email scanning.”

Indian home users have a 5.78 per cent risk ratio, when it comes to such threats which is higher than the global average.

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Globally, home users around the world have a 29.39 per cent chance of encountering any type of PC malware, which represents an increase of around 5 per cent compared to the previous year.

The chances of users being targeted by an advanced threat are relatively lower, but the proportion is similar to all threats, with consumers having a 5 per cent chance of encountering an advanced threat. In comparison, the chances were 4.61 per cent in the previous year.

“The risk ratio has increased worldwide for all malware attacks, and we can see that India is no exception,” said Michal Salat, Director of Threat Intelligence at Avast.

“In the pandemic, the internet has been kind of a ‘life saver’ for many, empowering them to stay connected with loved ones during the lockdown, to attend virtual workout sessions, get togethers, classes, and work remotely. But cybercriminals have also taken notice of this, and so we have seen a variety of tailored campaigns taking advantage of increased online activities, such as Covid-19 related attacks, sextortion campaigns, spyware, and ransomware,” Salat added.

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Geographies with more conflictive socio-political situations, such as the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe, seem to be facing more risk in the online world as well, the report further revealed.

The data included in the report was collected from Avast’s threat detection network, and represents a data snapshot, constructed with the threats Avast protected its PC users from during March 16 and April 14.

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