Smaller cities become bigger targets of cyber criminals

Chennai: The faster penetration of the Internet amidst low awareness about cybersecurity has turned netizens of smaller cities soft targets for cyber criminals. Ransomware attacks, clout computing breaches and detection of machine learning systems could be some of the main cyber security threats expected in 2020.

Guwahati, Lucknow, Bhubaneswar and Jaipur witnessed a massive 45 per cent, 44 per cent, 43 per cent and 40 per cent of their cyber users coming under cyber attack, according to Q2 findings of K7 Computing’s Cyber Threat Monitor.

Patna registered the highest percentile of cyber attacks at 47 per cent compared to other tier-II cities covered in the study and higher than any tier-I city.

“It is definitely an area of real concern for the country that considers itself a nation of villages. The positive trend of fast-growing Indian towns and smaller cities on the global landscape is certainly attracting the attention of cyber criminals who are becoming more and more sophisticated. It is not only a major threat to enterprises in these areas but also to consumers who are becoming heavy cyber users because of low Internet data cost, and easy and affordable availability of devices which can be exploited,” said J Kesavardhanan, founder and CTO of K7 Computing.

The infection rate in Hyderabad was 41 per cent up from 39 per cent recorded in the previous quarter. Bengaluru and Pune experienced 39 per cent and 35 per cent of cyber attacks, similar to the previous quarter. Despite a 2 per cent decrease in infection rate from the previous quarter, Chennai remain-ed most vulnerable at 46 per cent. Kolkata recorded 41 per cent, Ahmedabad 37 per cent and Mumbai 30 per cent.

Exploitation of loopholes continued to be a major threat that impacted both Windows and iOS systems. While the iOS vulnerabilities were found in the iMessage service that exists in iPhone and Siri components, Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) based attacks remained the dominant type of cyber threat in Windows. USB storage device based threats remain the top malware risk for Windows users. In mobile devices, adware continued to dominate as it remained a growing “sweet spot” for cybercriminals.

According to Sophos, in 2020, ransomware will raise the stakes by changing or adding traits to confuse some anti-ransomware protection.

Further, small missteps in the cloud will end up exposing large businesses. The greatest vulnerability for cloud computing is simple misconfiguration. As cloud systems become more complex and more flexible, operator error continues to increase risk.

Over the next year, we expect to see more incidents where cybercriminals attempt to trick machine learning detection and classification models, and even leverage machine learning to generate highly convincing fake content for social engineering attacks, finds Joe Levy, CTO, Sophos.

5G will be the most fundamental game-changing technology to impact the cybersecurity landscape – maybe ever. 5G promises to connect almost all aspects of life through the network with game-changing speed and lower latency, but it will also introduce significant security risks with new potential entry points that will expose organisations to new types of attacks.