Philippines among high-risk nations for malware infection

CEBU, Philippines – The Philippines is identified as among the 98 countries in the world with high risk of local infection last year, a study released yesterday revealed.

About 51 to 59 percent of Filipino users' devices were infected by online local malware last year, Kaspersky Lab's Security bulletin reported.

Local infection refers to detected malicious objects located on user computers or on removable media connected to the computers like flash drives, camera and phone memory cards, or external hard drives.

In terms of online threats or web-based attacks,  the annual statistics revealed almost three out of 10 Filipino web users faced some form of web-based attacks in  2015.

"These figures show that Filipinos, both corporate users and individual users, are never safe against cybercrimes as cyber criminals become more aggressive," said Jimmy Fong, Channel Sales Director at Kaspersky Lab Southeast Asia.

May it be a simple mobile malware, a sophisticated APT attack or a ransomware attack, Filipinos must remember, he said that their money, their identity and their privacy are all at stake. "And, they need to be better secured."

Aside from the Philippines, the report included other high risk countries, such as India (59.7 percent), Brazil (53.9 percent), China (53.4 percent), UAE (52.7 percent), Serbia (50.1 percent,) Argentina (47.4 percent), Spain (44.6 percent), Poland (44.3 percent), Germany (44 percent), Greece (42.8 percent), France (42.6 percent), Korea (41.7 percent), and Austria (41.7 percent).

To assess the countries in which users most often face cyber threats, Kaspersky Lab calculated how often its users encountered detection verdicts on their machines in each country.

The resulting data characterizes the risk of infection that computers are exposed to in different countries across the globe, providing an indicator of the aggressiveness of the environment facing computers in different parts of the world.

Kaspersky Lab Security Bulletin 2015 were based on the detection verdicts returned by the web antivirus module, received from users of Kaspersky Lab products who have consented to provide their statistical data.

The report only included countries with more than 10,000 Kaspersky Lab product users. (FREEMAN)