Malware threats up 48 per cent in 2019: Seqrite report

Seqrite, an enterprise solutions arm of cyber security firm Quick Heal, said that it detected and blocked over 146 million enterprise threats in 2019, which is 48 per cent more than the number of attacks in 2018.

Cyber security experts have found that cyber criminals are employing newer or previously unknown threat vectors to barge into the enterprise security networks. About a quarter of all the attacks come under this bracket.

In its Annual Threat Report 2020, Seqrite noted that there was a drastic increase in the volume, intensity and sophistication in the nature of attacks in the last 12 months. The report found that manufacturing, BFSI, education, information technology and IT-enabled services, healthcare and the government sector have become the targets.

“The sharp spike should be a cause for concern for Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) in the country, especially given the growing digital penetration within their enterprise networks,” said Sanjay Katkar, Joint Managing Director and Chief Technology Officer of Quick Heal Technologies.

Vulnerable to attack

As they go for digital transformation, enterprises and governments are becoming vulnerable to sophisticated threats and attack campaigns conducted by organised cyber crime cells and hostile nation-states. “They try to disrupt the larger socio-economic activity and stealing critical, important, and sensitive information,” he said.

With network vulnerabilities and potential entry points increasing at a rapid pace, threat actors are expected to leverage artificial intelligence capabilities to power their malware campaigns in the future.