HYDERABAD: India accounts for five per cent of the global attacks on critical infrastructure by Iranian groups, which are becoming increasingly aggressive while targeting critical and non-critical infrastructures, according to the Microsoft Digital Defence Report-2022 (MDDR) which was released on March 21.
According to the report, India suffered 23 per cent distributed denial of services (DDoS) attacks — where fake traffic overwhelms a target website — second only after the United States, which bore 54 per cent of such attacks. In the second half of 2021, India saw just two per cent of all attacks.
The report attributed the alarming rise in attacks in Asia to the region’s huge gaming footprint, especially in India, China, Japan and South Korea.
Terming ransomware and extortion as a national threat, the report said such attacks pose an increased danger to individuals as critical infrastructure, businesses of all sizes and state and local governments are targetted by criminals.
The report cited the May 2022 attack in India that led to flight delays and cancellations for one of India’s largest airlines.
The report also found that India, Israel, the UAE, Canada, Germany, Switzerland and Japan were among the most frequently targeted by nation-state groups, with a particularly heavy focus on American and British enterprises.
Microsoft said it detected a spike in Iranian state actors targeting IT companies based in India in August-September 2021.
Australia, Chile, the European Union (EU), Japan, Singapore, the UK and the United States, have developed, updated, or implemented cross-sector or sector-specific cyber-security requirements.
“Others like India and Switzerland have already issued or are developing cyber-security incident reporting requirements for critical infrastructure and essential service providers,” it said.
