Kaspersky detected almost 500,000 phishing attempts related to Southeast Asia last year, with the Philippines as the top target at 163,279.
These identified phishing links relate to finance matters, specifically e-commerce, banking, and payment systems.
Phishing tricks users into giving scammers access to their devices, accounts, or personal information by impersonating a trusted source, infecting the victim’s device with malware, or stealing their information. These social engineering schemes use trust to obtain valuable information.
In 2023, the Philippines had 163,279 financial phishing attempts, followed by Malaysia with 124,105, Indonesia with 97,465, and Vietnam with 36,130. Thailand and Singapore had the least, with 25,227 and 9,502, respectively.
“Cybercriminals employ various tactics, including financial-related phishing, to deceive employees and trick them into falling victim to an attack. Our recent study showed employee security violations can be as damaging as external hacking for companies in Asia Pacific which means the human factor continues to play a role in making businesses vulnerable. Tools to help safeguard against human error are a vital step forward, but they can’t exclude employee education, skills development, and overall strengthening of the company’s ability to detect and respond to cyberattacks,” commented Yeo Siang Tiong, General Manager for Southeast Asia at Kaspersky.
To help companies protect their systems against the damages of a successful phishing attack, Kaspersky recommends implementing the following:
- To advance decision-makers’ understanding of the importance of cybersecurity and how best to distribute budgets to stay ahead of threats, engage them with Kaspersky Interactive Protection Simulation for enhanced C-level professional education.
- Consider experts’ help. For example, Kaspersky Assessments family of professional services identifies security gaps in your system’s configuration, and the Security Architecture Design helps create an IT security infrastructure that’s a perfect fit for a particular company. Every step of implementation is grounded in real security needs, giving decision-makers convincing arguments to allocate budgets.
- Install and use enterprise security solutions with anti-phishing software: The Advanced Anomaly Control feature within Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Business Advanced, Kaspersky Total Security for Business, and Kaspersky Endpoint Detection and Response Optimum help prevent potentially dangerous activities that are ‘out of the norm,’ both undertaken by the user and initiated by the attacker who has already seized control of the system.
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