Cyber threats, data breaches and high-risk vulnerabilities have continued to dominate the first half of 2014 as seen in Trend Micro Incorporated’s second quarter security roundup report, “Turning the Tables on Cybercrime: Responding to Evolving Cybercrime Tactics.” The severity of these attacks intensified against financial and banking institutions as well as retail outlets. Total attacks have exposed more than 10 million personal records as of July 2014 and strongly indicate the need for organizations to adopt a more strategic approach to safeguarding digital information.
These incident attacks in the second quarter affecting consumer’s personal information included theft of data such as customer names, passwords, email addresses, home addresses, phone numbers, and dates of birth. These types of personal privacy breaches have affected organization’s sales and earnings while leaving customers unable to access accounts and dealing with service disruption. As a result many countries have begun developing stricter privacy and data collection policies to begin dealing with this problem.
As of July 15, 2014, more than 400 data breach incidents have been reported, creating the need for organizations to identify and understand their core data in order to protect and build an effective defense strategy to keep them secure. A change in mindset, organizations initially need to determine which information they regard as “core data” before devising a plan on how to protect it.
According to the security solutions provider, India is among top three nations most affected by online banking malware. Out of total banking malware detected in last quarter (April, May, June), 7% of them were found in India
“India posed for cybercriminal expansion with an average of 2.5 million malware detection in a given month. Furthermore, 33% more malicious apps were downloaded, Network traffic from affected computers continued to rise and Government-issued site certificates for compromised Google domains. These and many such incidents show that cybercriminals will always adapt to new trends and situations whether in the use of new malware or targeted attacks techniques to continue their attacks,” Myla V Pilao, Director, TrendLabs.