India in top 10 countries in Global Threat Rank

One out of 150 emails were malicious in India in 2016, compared with one out of 305 in 2015. According to Symantec’s Internet Security Threat Report (ISTR) released here on Wednesday, India ranks No 4 in Global Threat Rank by Source.

“US is ranked No 1, followed by China and Brazil,” said Tarun Kaura, Director (Solution Product Management — Asia Pacific and Japan), Symantec. He said that there was an alarming rise in targeted attacks aimed at politically-motivated sabotage and subversion.

Talking about malicious emails, Kaura said that they were the weapon of choice for a wide range of cyber attacks last year. Malicious emails disguised as routine correspondence, such as invoices or delivery notifications, were the favoured means of spreading ransomware.

“Attackers’ demand has been rising year after year. From $294 in 2015, attackers in 2016 demanded up to $1,077,” he said.

It is not just about ransomware and other threats, attacks on IoT devices are beginning to emerge, and also a growing reliance on cloud services has left organisations open to attacks. Symantec witnessed a two-fold increase in attempted attacks against IoT devices last year, and the average IoT device was attacked once every two minutes.