Kaspersky Lab held its annual Cyber Security Weekend for the Middle East, Turkey and Africa (META) to explore the evolution of the threat landscape and to find out which approaches businesses need to take to survive.
Various topics were discussed, including IoT security, blockchain technology and the rise of targeted attacks as well as threats aimed at medical infrastructure.
During the event, statistics from the Kaspersky Security Network for the first quarter of 2018 were revealed and showed an overall increase in local threats infections (malware spread in local networks, by USBs, CDs, DVDs) with Kenya taking first place with 61.8% of its users infected, followed by 58.6% in Nigeria, followed by 55.6% in Egypt.
The statistics also showed a noticeable overall increase in web threats with 30.2% of users affects by malware in Saudi Arabia, 28.8% in both Egypt and Oman followed by 27.4% in the UAE. On the other hand, South Africa had the lowest number of affected users in the META region (48.8% for local and 19.6% for web threats).
“We have seen an 8.5% increase in ransomware attacks in the META region in Q1 of 2018 compared to Q1 of last year, this number is not surprising, judging by the infamous success of major ransomware attacks last year,” said Mohamad Amin Hasbini, Senior Security Researcher, Global Research & Analysis Team, Kaspersky Lab.
“We do expect such attacks to grow and evolve in complexity and sophistication. This highlights the importance of proper security solutions backed with continuous security training to raise awareness on the dangers of such attacks.”
