Business

Wednesday April 29, 2009

Better Net security ranking for M’sia


PETALING JAYA: Malaysia’s ranking in the Asia-Pacific and Japan for bot-infected computers, hosting phishing websites and spam origin has dropped in 2008, according to Symantec’s Internet Security Threat Report Volume XIV.

For top countries hosting phishing sites, Malaysia’s ranking dropped to ninth in 2008 from eighth in 2007 for the region.

Meanwhile, for spam origin, Malaysia was ninth last year compared with sixth in 2007.

Nonetheless, the absolute volume of these activities continues to grow at a rapid pace globally. Last year, 1.6 million malicious code threats were detected, an increase of 265% from 2007.

Symantec Corp (M) Sdn Bhd consultant for enterprise security Kannan Velayutham said the ranking improvement was partly due to rising security awareness among Malaysian consumers and organisations.

Relatively, security attackers preferred countries like China and South Korea, which had higher Internet and broadband penetrations, he said at a briefing on the report yesterday.

“For example, there are 83.3 million broadband users in China alone, and this represented 21% of total global broadband users,” Kannan said.

As Malaysia’s broadband usage expanded, users would also be exposed to similar threats, especially with the rising web-based attacks, he added.

Symantec’s report also showed that web surfing was the primary source of new infections last year, with 63% of malicious activities involving web applications.

Attackers used bot-infected computers, phishing sites and spam e-mails to derive personal information such as credit card and bank accounts details and sold them in “underground economy” for gains, Kannan said.

“Web surfers can visit a comprised website and unknowingly place their personal and financial information at risk,” he added.

In addition, data leakage also happens mostly when users lose their portable devises like USB memory keys, portable hard drives and smart phones.

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