In the last year, the chances of a business coming face to face with a cyberthreat have increased by a quarter, a new report from cybersecurity firm Avast suggests.
Based on data from 10,000 private computers, as well as 1,000 devices belonging to businesses, the report states that the overall chance of employees encountering a cyberthreat rose from 11.25 percent last year, to 13.9 percent this year.
When it comes to “advanced” threats - those that are rarely seen, or those that are able to bypass security software - businesses globally now have a 2.29 percent chance of experiencing such an attack.
Analysis of regional trends shows that businesses operating in less stable socio-political environments have a higher chance of suffering a data breach. Asian nations are “among the top countries” where businesses are most at risk, followed by Africa and Eastern Europe. On the other end of the spectrum are the Nordics, Western and Central European countries, the US, Latvia and the Dominican Republic.
When it comes to advanced threats, businesses operating in countries with less than 11 million people are more at risk.
“In the pandemic, enabling the staff to work from home at such short notice has posed serious challenges to business security. Not every company was prepared with secure business VPNs and remote access solutions, and cybercriminals have taken advantage of this. We observed an increased abuse of the remote desktop protocol, and specifically have seen ransomware attacks become more prevalent,” said Michal Salat, Director of Threat Intelligence at Avast.
“Overall, the risk ratio of businesses encountering malware attacks has increased worldwide.”