As organisations get better at detecting data breaches, hackers have become increasingly persistent, retargeting the firms they earlier broke into, US-based cybersecurity firm FireEye said on Monday.
A US-headquartered firm, Malwarebytes estimated an increase of 270% of malware detections amongst business in the Asia-Pacific region.
The financial services sector was seen to have the largest number of retargeted victims in 2018, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, revealed the "FireEye 2019 Mandiant M-Trends Report". This trend is particularly relevant for the Indian market, given last year's cyber attack incidents at Cosmos Bank and State Bank of Mauritius.
Among the top ten countries that pose the biggest threat to malware, Asia Pacific tops the list with five countries.
Country Biggest Threat
1. United States Information Theft
2. Indonesia Backdoors
3. United Kingdom Information Theft
4. France Information Theft
5. Malaysia Backdoors
6. Thailand Backdoors
7. Australia Cryptomining
8. Germany Information Theft
9. Brazil Adware
10. Philippines Information Theft
"I encourage Indian firms to reassess their security posture and determine whether they can quickly detect and respond to intrusions," said Steve Ledzian, Vice President and APAC CTO, FireEye.
The Indian businesses must also determine whether "they know who is likely to attack them and how, and whether they have tested their security against human attackers in a red team scenario to try to spot weaknesses before their real world adversaries do," Ledzian said in a statement.
Singapore, a prized target
In Singapore alone, Malwarebytes saw a 180% increase in malware detections amongst the business sectors.
In the meantime, organisations appear to be getting better at discovering breaches internally, rather than being notified by an outside source such as law enforcement.
